A stranger asking for directions to the house, at around the time of the murder, adds to the intrigue. Ackroyd’s murder inside a locked room with an open window and a weapon from his own collection means that the household forms the bulk of likely suspects. She turns the trope of the genre on their head and reveals to the shocked readers that ‘Watson’ is the murderer. In The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Christie doesn’t change the foundation of the tropes. It is usually told in first person by an associate of the amateur detective – in whodunit terms a “Watson”. The story essentially retraces its steps back to reconstruct how and why a crime was committed and who committed it. It has all the intrigues, scandals and blood without the nasty bits or even a nasty setting. There is just the thrill of unearthing clues and unlikely secrets and witty dialogue. The horror of the murder is downplayed, the victim not exactly missed by anyone or grieved.

They bear secrets that obstruct the path of justice and truth until they are revealed one by one by the amateur detective. A group of people close to the victim are suspects of the crime. The usual tropes of the British whodunit include a pastoral setting- a small village or vacation house- where a murder is committed in seemingly impossible circumstances. The continuing success of the book is a testimony to its genre-defining legacy. Here was a writer, writing in the golden age of detective fiction and still managing to pull a rabbit out of the hat in terms of a plot twist. Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, published in 1926 propelled her to instant literary stardom.

The murder of the roger ackroyd