Tangled Web UK Review November 2000
Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? by
Pierre Bayard
hbk out October 00
Published by 4th Estate
at £10
This extraordinary book, written by a psychoanalyst who is, perhaps improbably, also a professor of literature at the University of Paris, provides the most unusual and thought-provoking assessment of a single crime novel that I have ever read. Three quarters of a century have passed since Agatha Christie wrote ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’. The book was an instant success and retains its popularity to this day. True, the critic Edmund Wilson attacked it in ‘Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?’, but although he chose a good title, he also succumbed to false and elitist reasoning. Not only do a great many people care but, as Bayard now shows, Christie’s novel offers interpretative possibilities that even she can never have dreamed of.
Only on isolated occasions does Bayard succumb to academic jargon. For the most part, this is a gleeful book, exploiting to the full that element of detective fiction which centres on the puzzle. He argues that the famous solution to the mystery of Ackroyd’s death which Hercule Poirot propounded was, in fact, incorrect. Through a close understanding of Christie’s methods (and his analysis of them is a highlight of his book) and a most careful reading of the text, Bayard comes up with an alternative explanation and wholly unexpected culprit – and no, he does not point the finger of guilt at Poirot. Anyone who enjoys classic mystery fiction is likely to find something of interest here.
(
Martin Edwards
- author of the Harry Delvin Mysteries)
