How could I pass up a book about one of Agatha Christie’s books?

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is one of Christie’s most famous works, with its ending stoking controversy over whether Christie had played fair with her readers. So I was very intrigued when I read the blurb of this book, which claims that Christie might have been “manipulated by her narrator” and promises to reveal who truly murdered Roger Ackroyd.

What I expected from this book was a persuasively argued case that would make me rethink Christie’s work. What I got was slightly different.

Who Killed Roger Ackroyd is divided into four parts:

1. The investigation – relooking the case, examining the instances where Christie uses the “lie by omission” and discussing the Van Dine Principle; that a shrewd reader should be able to see through the red herrings in a case.
2. Counterinvestigation – Bayard digresses from The Murder of Roger Ackroyd to look at another Christie novel: Endless Night; and to discuss the improbabilities in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.
3. Delusion – This was perhaps the least interesting part of the book for me, as Bayard spends a lot of time talking about delusion and its relationship to theory and criticism
4. Truth – Looking at Curtain, the last book that Christie wrote, Bayard puts forth his theory as to who really killed Roger Ackroyd.

Now for the million-dollar question: was this book persuasive? To me, not really. The third section on delusion lost quite a bit of my interest, and Bayard didn’t spend enough time on his theory for the last section to regain my interest and persuade me to believe that another character was the true murderer. Bayard seems to rely on the argument that Dr Shepherd does not have the character to be a murderer to prove he is not a murderer, but the lie by omission could also include greater faults in his character. Could not Dr Shepher, as the narrator, paint an intentionally sympathetic picture so that we don’t wish to indict him?

In the end, I think this book provided something that I wasn’t expecting. While I enjoyed the discussion about other Christie books and think they could provide an alternative way to view The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, there was too much unrelated theory, which I wasn’t really interested in. Still, I think fans of Christie who are already familiar with her other works will enjoy this book for the overall discussion of the Christie canon.