The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd Analysis

AAgatha Christie shows why The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is the model of detective fiction novels by using several intimations in her book. There are two types of clues, ones that are helpful to the detective and ones that are useless. Hints and evidence that purposely mislead the reader are known as red herrings. Joan Acocella discusses Christie’s work and brings up her use of red herrings in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, commenting, “...that is, when the occurrence is trivial but nonetheless mentioned—this is potentially a real clue. Or it may be a red herring, masquerading, by its modesty, as a real clue” (Acocella). The meaning of this quote is that an insignificant event could either be a substantial clue or a red herring disguised as a

Sheppard did not have time to take the murder weapon and dictaphone away, so in the following morning, before the crime was discovered, Sheppard had gone into the room and taken away the items from the table before anyone noticed. For this reason, Sheppard moved the chair out of place to block the table from people’s line of sight when entering the room. Logical solutions are vital to detective novels because relying heavily on existential powers and freakish machines to solve the mystery is pure laziness. At the time Christie published this novel, the thought of the narrator being the murderer was innovative and was the major basis as to why The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was and still is considered one of the greatest detective novels of all time. A clever solution compliments the clues in crime stories. If a story were to have several astutely placed details and clues, but a solution not nearly as good, there would be no point in including those hints. All the evidence must add up together and fall into place perfectly so the plot becomes more intriguing and the solution more coherent and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd does this