The Murder of Roger Ackroyd: detective novels maybe aren’t for me [spoilers]
Title: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Author: Agatha Christie
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pages: 288
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Who will like it? For fans of murder mysteries and loyal fans of Agatha Christie, this book is a treat and a must-read. Huge spoilers ahead in this review!!
I haven’t picked up a whodunit in a long time, and sometimes I find them having too much resemblance to being sucked into a black hole. All characters have millions of layers and engage in too many miscellaneous activities to keep track of, and there are so many loose threads that I need to pick, separate, and sew back into the backbone of the story. It takes excessive mental energy and logic when reading to me is more synonymous with soaking in a warm bath and unwinding. My mom and sister, however, showered this novel with glowing praise, declaring this to be Christie’s masterpiece. Dad apparently solved the mystery before Poirot did, just by watching the TV show episode, which I raised an eyebrow at.
Sometimes, I get so engrossed in a detective novel that I forget the other tasks and errands in my life — all I want to do is to finish finish finish the book, reading past midnight, or opening the cover the moment I wake up, still sleepy in the morning. Other times, I feel pressured to do that because people keep asking, are you there yet? Did you get to the twist? Do you know the ending? When I’m impatient and I don’t have time to ruminate over details, I start skimming my eyes over text and disregarding meaning, following the plot but not grappling with the details, and I cannot ruminate over anything beyond the literal text, and the murderer comes as a kick in the shin as I skim over the last couple of paragraphs.
Agatha Christie reveals many contextual clues along the way, gentling unwrapping the truth, that our murderer is none other than dear Dr. Sheppard himself. In re-reading vignettes, I see how Christie hints at him through not only clues but also the connotations of her diction, and the way she sets the tone and mood. I blinked at the idea of Dr. Sheppard while halfway through, but there were so many variables of other characters (the golden ring at the bottom of the pond with an ‘R’, the boots of Ralph & his footsteps, Flora’s walking upstairs and down, the strange man Dr. Sheppard bumped into, etc.) that confuse the main thread of the narrative. I briefly considered the possibility of Dr. Sheppard being the murderer, but then I thought back to the basic idea of a “reliable” versus “unreliable narrator”, and knowing that unreliable narrators leave details out, I decided that it would never ever be acceptable to take an unreliable narrator that far in a first-person detective novel. Where I got this assertion, I don’t know, but I just decided it would be bamboozling. Plus, since Dr. Sheppard seems logical, innocent, and objective — he was never overwhelmed with emotion and he was never hiding anything obvious. I felt we were on the same team, Dr. Sheppard, Poirot, and me, trying to crack this murder.
In the end, I was a little disappointed but also I understand the brilliance of it all. I was planning to watch the TV show episode, halfway through reading the book just to review the leads and the alibis and warming up my mind, and my sister stopped me a little too urgently. I kept thinking… Is it because the clues are too conspicuous and visual in a film format? Now I know.
