Which characters do we trust and distrust in detective fiction? Whose version of events do we consider credible or authoritative? In The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), Agatha Christie sensationally challenged the conventions of detective fiction. By revealing Dr Sheppard as the murderer, she confounds readers’ expectations that the narrator is a reliable interpreter of events and that the country doctor character is always a respectable one. This article examines her audacious twist on the genre.
Christie’s novel was published during the ‘Golden Age’ of detective fiction in Britain, the period between the two world wars when the genre flourished. Christie was a member of the Detection Club, an elite social circle of crime writers which formed in 1930. Together, the group developed a set of principles for the detective fiction genre. Plots were supposed to emphasise logic and rationality over intuition, and authors were expected to give readers a fair chance to solve the crime. This structure has been described by literary critic Stephen Knight as the ‘clue-puzzle’ formula. He explains how Christie’s novels ‘invited and empowered the careful reader to solve the problem along with the detective’. He notes that while Christie ‘perfected’ this approach, some of her novels ‘are not quite fairly open to such solving’ (1980, Ch. 4, p. 107). Whether or not The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was ‘fairly open’ to its readers — giving them a chance to solve the mystery as well — has proved controversial.
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