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Summary

Who Killed Roger Ackroyd - Pierre Bayard
Swaraj Mishra@swarajmishra
Jun 16, 2005 04:42 PM, 3130 Views
(Updated Jun 16, 2005)
When Hercule Poirot is Wrong!!

I am excited…. Guess why? This is the first product that I requested for and got …. Thanks MS….

But before going to this review, there is a warning for the readers…

I am going to talk on the plot of another book… Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie in detail in the current review. Hence, spoilers are there, including the climax of Murder of Roger Acrroyd. After all… the book Who Killed Roger Ackroyd is completely based on the climax of Murder of Roger Ackroyd!!!

One Key Question that forms the basis of this book:

What do you do, when the criminal is so cunning that he confuses even the author? And the author ends up blaming it on the wrong guy!!!! Too scary!!!

Who Killed Roger Ackroyd (WKRA) is entirely based on this theory, where the author Pierre Bayard goes through the masterpiece of Agatha Christie : Murder of Roger Ackroyd (MORA).

But that comes later. Before that, lets have a quick look on the concept of MORA.

Murder of Roger Ackroyd (MORA).

MORA was based in a small town in England, where a wealthy man: Mr. Roger Ackroyd was stabbed at his neck inside a closed room. Obviously the killer had come from the window and killed and gone. The last person to see him alive was his doctor: Dr. Sheppard.

The story goes through many twists and tales in the skillful narration of Dr. Sheppard. He tells a lot in his words, but they are skillfully crafted to conceal their real meaning. When we come to the climax, Agatha Christie drops a bombshell….. the killer is non other than our friendly narrator!!!

(For details on this, you can probably refer to the reviews on Murder of Roger Ackroyd on MS)

MORA and its impact on Agatha Christie:

This was the fourth novel of Agatha Christie. But instantly it catapulted her career as one of the greatest story tellers ever. She became a celebrity and Roger Ackroyd remained as a milestone.

But at the same time, she was referred as a prankster… who played with the sanity of her characters. People have been referring to this work as cheating, backstabbing, insane and so on…. The basic question was, she had broken the trust of people by making the most trustable person: the narrator as the criminal. Was it fair on her parts?

The Debate:

The debate continued for years on the fairness of the climax in Murder of Roger Ackroyd. There were several forums, discussions, newspaper articles and so on, where they tried to fight out if Agatha Christie was justified in putting forth her narrator (rather the “I” in the novel) as the killer.

All were the discussions on moral and ethics of her conclusion. But no one questioned her conclusion itself…. Until 75 years after the release of her book, Pierre Bayrad questioned the climax itself. He questioned, if Agatha Christie (i.e. her detective – Hercule Poirot) discovered the real culprit, or was the killer so cunning that he (or she) deceived even the great Hercule Poirot!!!

Who Killed Roger Ackroyd… Debate on Ethics

WKRA deals a lot with the question of ethics and morality in crime fictions. It tries to bring forth the various principles that were laid down by pundits of the trade and judges Agatha Christie against those standards. It was a very interesting reading to see what are the dos and don’ts while working on a crime fiction.

The most interesting part was probably the 10 point guidelines on what all should a murder mystery contain.

Who Killed Roger Ackroyd… Review of Agatha Christie

The second part of the book is a clear discussion on Agatha Christie and her works. This is a danger area for those who have not read many of her works. In this segment, the author discusses in detail, several works of Agatha Christie (special focus on Endless Night) and how she used to deceive the readers, Here the author talks about the culprits in her works and how Agatha Christie conned the readers through them.

Who Killed Roger Ackroyd… So who was it?

This is probably the most fascinating part of this work.

Through careful scrutiny of the words and by employing the methods of Agatha Christie herself, the author comes out with several interesting deductions. He questions the basic intellect of the reader, who had accepted the climax at the face of it. Some of the questions raised by Pierre Bayard are…

1. Was Dr. Sheppard really the killer?

2. Hercule Poirot’s solution was full with assumptions and deductions. Why did Dr. Sheppard accept it without any arguments?

3. Agatha Christie has used some lines from Dr. Sheppard’s narration in the climax to show that he had actually confessed of committing the crime. But Bayard scrutinizes those same sentences with more detail. Then he asks the question, did he actually ever confess of committing the crime? Being involved… probably yes, but really doing it???

4. What was the fate of Dr Sheppard after the fateful evening with Poirot? The novel is silent on that.

5. Why did Poirot tell everything to Sheppard in confidentiality? Was he expecting him to escape?

6. If Sheppard was not the killer (which Bayard tries to prove) and he was covering up someone…. Who was it?

The Conclusion:

Bayard concludes the novel when he comes out with the name of the real culprit…. Someone, who was as un suspectable and as likable as Dr. Sheppard himself. Believe me, when you read this book, you will be convinced with this alternate theory.

So who was it? Well well… I am not telling that J

My Opinion:

This book is a MUST Read for all crime fiction lovers, irrespective of the fact whether you like Agatha Christie or not. This book is about the principle and philosophy of crime fiction, which revolves around “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd”.

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