Every October, it’s mystery month on JPC Allen Writes. If you love classic mysteries, I have a book rec: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. This novel came early in her career, published only six years after her first novel. But this is the novel that proved Mrs. Christie was the Queen of Crime with a solution so controversial and original that it made many critics cry, “Foul!”. Today, it’s recognized for the brilliant twist that it is.
The novel is narrated by Dr. James Sheppard, a country doctor in the tiny English town of KIng’s Abbott. Not much happens in the town, and Dr. Sheppard was wry attitude toward the main hobby of most of the town’s residents, including his sister: gossip.
The town is shocked when a local wealthy woman, Mrs. Ferrars, is found dead, apparently a suicide. In the year since her husband’s death, she’d been seeing Roger Ackroyd, a rich businessman with a home in the area, and everyone in town expected them to soon announce their engagement. When Dr. Sheppard meets Ackroyd in town, he can see how hard the news of Mrs. Ferrars’s death has hit him. Ackroyd says he needs to speak to the doctor and invites him to dinner that night at his mansion, Fernly Park.
At the dinner, readers meet the rest of Ackroyd’s household: his sister-in-law, her daughter, his secretary, housekeeper, and butler, and a houseguest who is a big game hunter. After the meal, Ackroyd takes Sheppard into his study and tells him he knows why Mrs. Ferrars took her life. She had poisoned her abusive husband last year and someone had been blackmailing her because of it. She hadn’t given Ackroyd the name when she’d confessed to him, but now Ackroyd has just received a letter from her, which he hadn’t opened yet. He tells Sheppard he’ll read it when he’s alone.
Dr. Sheppard leaves the house, only to receive a call at home from the butler, saying Roger Ackroyd has been murdered. He races back to Fernly Park, but when the butler answers the door, he says he made no such call. Ackroyd is still in his study. Dr. Sheppard wants to make sure Ackroyd is all right. When his knocks and calls provoke no response, they break in the door and find Roger Ackroyd stabbed to death.
Although the police are called in, Ackroyd’s niece hires Sheppard’s new neighbor to look into the case: retired detective Hercule Poirot. Poirot usually worked with his friend Hastings when he solved cases, but Hastings now lives in Argentina. So Sheppard falls into the role of Watson to Poirot’s Sherlock Holmes, recording the progress of the case and providing Poirot with information only a local would have.
The murderer weaved an intricate crime, but not a perfect one. Poirot works his way through the tangle with a solution no one saw coming when the novel was published in 1926. Each time I read it, I marvel at how Mrs. Christie writes a fair-play mystery, with all the clues available to readers, and still yanks the rug out from under us.
If you love classic mysteries, which novels are your favorites?
Here are more of my recommendations of mystery books.
