While Christie stays true to her signature trope, there are slight changes in the execution. This involves putting the secrets he uncovered from all the suspects into their appropriate places like in a jigsaw puzzle or a game of clue. Along the way, he plays matchmaker to Flora and Major Blunt.Ĭhristie’s signature trope is the revelation of the murderer by the detective who gathers all the likely suspects into a room together and narrates the complete picture of the events leading up to the crime. Each of the suspects, hides a secret, which Poirot must uncover in order to straighten the tangled web of clues and use his intellect to deduce the sequence of events and reveal the murderer. There are too many clues that instead of helping with the investigation, delay the process. 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 roger ackroyd 1926