Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?: The Mystery Behind the Agatha Christie Mystery [Hardcover]

Pierre Bayard (Author), Carol Cosman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2000

An exciting exploration of a book we think we know, the conventions of the mystery novel, and the act of reading itself. Agatha Christie's classic novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd has sparked great debate in the years since its publication in 1926, inspiring cultural critics from Umberto Eco to Roland Barthes to explore its unique construction: a murder mystery in which the murderer appears to be the narrator. In Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?, Pierre Bayard reopens the Ackroyd file. This psychoanalyst-cum-professor of literature examines the details of the case anew and offers an ingenious re-reading of one of the most popular mysteries of all time. Wondering why Hercule Poirot's conclusion about the identity of the murderer has never been questioned, Bayard uses a creative mix of literary theory and psychoanalysis to propose a startling new solution.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Penzler Pick, August 2000: Edmund Wilson, the famous literary critic, once inquired disdainfully (in an essay explaining his inability to develop the mystery-reading habit), "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" In a single sentence, with its reference to the notorious plot of Agatha Christie's sixth novel, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, he struck deep at the collective spirit of a community of like-minded souls: the detective fiction readers of the world. Ever since 1926, when the novel in question was first published, helping to insure its author's reputation as the ruling queen of crafty crime, mystery fans have indeed cared. Passionately.

But until the arrival of this provocative rereading of the case, written by a psychoanalyst and translated from the French, it is likely that not one of them ever doubted the validity of the solution as worked out by the redoubtable Hercule Poirot. After all, if the author's own detective had incorrectly followed the clues laid down for him, what kind of unsteady ground was the reader left standing on?

Although Bayard makes it clear that those picking up his book don't necessarily have to return to the original text--he does give a very concise summary of the principal characters and actions of Christie's story--it is an exercise, really a pleasure, that I urge you toward. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is such a landmark of the genre that it is not just a bit of nostalgia, a form of genial time travel, but also a reminder of what the Golden Age of the mystery novel was all about: the matching of wits between writer and reader, with puzzles that truly puzzled and were made all the more satisfying by the operative credo of fair play.

To address the actual plot of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is to risk spoiling the fun. Let's just say there is an English village, King's Abbott, in which a bluff country squire, the much-mentioned Ackroyd, resides until his untimely death, [stabbed] by an unknown assailant. Unfortunately for the murderer--or so one used to think, pre-Pierre Bayard--there is also in the village a retired Belgian police inspector, the unparalleled M. Hercule Poirot. Poirot's celebrated "little grey cells," those he uses to form his theories of a case, steadily power the investigation to its startling conclusion, one that has always been as magnificent for its shock value as for its apparently irrefutable logic. That Professor Bayard's delicate probing of the book's structure manages to turn it convincingly in a fresh direction, toward an actual murderer never even suspected, is a triumph of scholarship that is at once playful and serious.

How we approach classic texts should never be as static an experience as we generally allow it to be, a truth proved anew by Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? It now joins a list of other similarly clever literary treats, among which I include Rex Stout's "Watson Was a Woman" and Frederick Crews's The Pooh Perplex. --Otto Penzler

From Publishers Weekly

Agatha Christie's private detective Hercule Poirot and mystery devotees alike have presumed for three quarters of a century that Dr. James Sheppard, the narrator of the 1926 novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, is the only possible culprit in the title character's death. In this inquiry into the way readers perceive and writers construct the perfect mystery, Bayard, a French psychoanalyst, presents the possibility that Sheppard was wrongly accused. Examining this classic novel through a Freudian lens, Bayard discovers flaws in Poirot's deductive reasoning that led to the allegation, and shows how to find the real killer by learning how to see a certain way. That kind of seeing involves paying attention not only to the obscuring of information, but also to its omission, or "psychic blindness," a literary convention of which Christie was a master, according to Bayard. Employing his knowledge of psychoanalytic and literary theory, and the Van Dine principleAthe 20 rules of the detective mystery, established by S.S. Van Dine in the 1928 issue of the American MagazineABayard conducts a close reading of the novel to demonstrate how he came to consider Sheppard's innocence, and further suggests that we rethink the deaths of literary characters Madame Bovary and Bergotte, ask what happened to Les Liaisons dangereuses's Madame de Merteuil after her flight to Holland and contemplate who really unleashed the disaster in Emile Zola's Germinal. Bayard is an intuitive and passionate reader of the genre, and manages to build suspense while mounting his airtight argument against Sheppard as murderer and to finger the real killer. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: New Press, The (June 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 156584579X
• ISBN-13: 978-1565845794
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,627,482 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Such a disappointment, August 15, 2000

By 

RolloTomasi (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?: The Mystery Behind the Agatha Christie Mystery (Hardcover)

If you have not yet read Agatha Christie's THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD, you are not doing yourself a favor by reading any of the reviews on this board, some of which give away the solution to that classic mystery. I strongly suggest that you read it first before going any further on this page.

Christie's controversial 1926 novel has long been considered a masterpiece of the genre, and for good reason. With its intricate plot and ingenious solution, THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD is a first-rate mystery from a first-rate mystery novelist. Pierre Bayard's book, WHO KILLED ROGER ACKROYD?, is structured as a re-examination of the facts, and suggests--no, declares outright--that Christie's solution is the wrong one.

Quite a claim, really. And yet, readers who suspend their disbelief at the sheer audacity of the author's proposition and take the experiment at face value are bound to be disappointed, as I was. For only about twenty-five percent of WHO KILLED ROGER ACKROYD? is devoted to Bayard's new hypothesis (which is, by far, the most interesting part of the book). The other seventy-five percent is devoted to exposition on matters of literary theory, philosophy, and psychoanalysis. There's nothing necessarily wrong about that, except that I found much of Bayard's argument largely irrelevant, contradictory, and unforgivably pretentious.

Unfortunate, considering that a few of his points are actually quite astute; I found the chapters on "the paradox of the liar" and "the lie by omission" perceptive and thought-provoking. But when Bayard suggests more than once that not only could Christie's other mysteries benefit from further scrutiny, but that the detective story in general is full of potential holes...well, as a mystery fan, I didn't exactly appreciate the implication that my favorite genre was doomed to be an exercise in futility.

I was even more annoyed by Bayard's use of psychoanalysis as a tool in his argument, as though

Freudian theory matters a whit to Agatha Christie's (admittedly cardboard) characters. This section (four chapters!), in which Bayard introduces such ideas as "disorganized paranoid delusion" and accuses Hercule Poirot of having a "paranoid thought disorder," is easily the most unnecessary part of the book. Personally I consider it a shameless attempt by Bayard to peddle his psychoanalytic knowledge under the guise of an intelligent reading exercise. Certainly I respect him for his considerable expertise in this area, but really, couldn't he just publish these four chapters in a separate psychology textbook, rather than try to convince readers that he's actually doing something constructive with Christie's novel?

Finally we get to Bayard's conclusion regarding who really killed Roger Ackroyd. The revelation was certainly a surprise, and afforded me a moment of pleasure--which was immediately dashed by the realization that Bayard's shock revelation, unlike Christie's, was neither airtight nor carefully developed. I was hoping for a clever reworking of plot elements so that the result would be at least on the level of an above-average mystery novel. I guess being a Christie reader has inflated my expectations. Bayard all but ignores THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD's meticulously layered plot and instead uses a simplistic process of elimination to rule out all the suspects but one. Most unsatisfying. It's one thing to trash someone else's work, but it's another thing to try to formulate your own solution, especially when you're up against a pro like Dame Agatha. I shudder to think of the result if Bayard sets out to write a legitimate detective story of his own.

Maybe the idea behind this project was so misconceived, it was doomed from the start regardless of the execution. After all, the whole concept behind the book is rather pointless. In all great fiction, the story becomes so real to the reader that we forget that the author is pulling the strings, but that's no reason to go overboard and dictate "what really happened." Call me crazy, but when I read a book--ESPECIALLY when I read an Agatha Christie--I usually expect the author to have full control over the story and the characters' actions and what they think and say. Didn't the editors of this book (if there were any involved, I'm not sure) bother to note that Bayard makes just a little too much use of artistic license?

The most glaring problem with WHO KILLED ROGER ACKROYD?, however, is the fact that it doesn't even comply with its own manufactured rules. Bayard's novel is rife with self-contradictions. He attempts to use psychoanalysis to probe Christie's characters, even though judging them according to Freudian theory is akin to using calculus as a device for counting to ten. He attempts to furnish a new solution to the crime, even though he claims that the book's structure precludes any solid conclusions. He pooh-poohs the reliability of the mystery genre, but champions his own methods as a way to understand it. Finally, he completely ignores what makes Christie such an effective writer--her craftsmanship and her endlessly inventive plotting--and instead trots out some very elementary reasoning in a pitiful attempt to outwit her. If you must read WHO KILLED ROGER ACKROYD?, be forewarned that it does give away the solutions to some of Christie's best novels (many of them, in my opinion, even better than THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD), so hold off until after you've read them all. But by the time you've done that, you'll probably have a much deeper understanding of the writer and her work than what Bayard has demonstrated here.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Worthy Analysis, May 12, 2003

By 

Lisa J. Steele (Bolton, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?: The Mystery Behind the Agatha Christie Mystery (Hardcover)

First, a warning, Bayard's book contains long discussions of the methods used by Christie to hide the answer in many of her books. As such, it is best suited for Christie readers who have already read those works, or who do not mind having surprises revealed.

Otherwise, Bayard provides a good analysis of how Christie fools her readers, pulling back the curtain to reveal the magician's secrets. His taxonimy of the tricks is useful, although incomplete. This makes it a good guide for an aspiring mystery writer looking to see how Christie worked her magic.

Bayard's psychoanalysis of the crime is a bit more speculative. One can nit-pick his facts and conclusions, but the exercise is itself useful. Appling critical analysis to Christie's solution seems no less absurd than Tey's re-analysis of Richard III in Daughter of Time, the endless books on Jack the Ripper's identity, or decades of English literature classes convinced that the author is the last person to understand the significance of his own works.

In sum, worth reading for those who enjoy learning about the tricks of the mystery writing trade.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Relax! Bayard affirms the greatness of Agatha Christie., November 6, 2001

By 

darragh o'donoghue - See all my reviews

This review is from: Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?: The Mystery Behind the Agatha Christie Mystery (Paperback)

This book could never have been written by an Anglophone critic, who would treat the French reverence of Agatha Christie with the same bemused condescension as its apotheosis of Jerry Lewis (when Bayard lists the major writers who have discussed 'Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?' (Barthes, Eco, Robbe-Grillet, Perec et al), English-speaking writers are predictably absent). Coming from such an Anglophone culture as I do, it is startling to find Christie discussed not as a slick purveyor of narrow puzzles, but as a great writer of works of art, to be analysed with the same respect as Tolstoy and Flaubert. Bayard can make such claims because of his method - by focusing rigorously on the body of work, the texts and their techniques, and dismissing the irrelevant claims of biography, class, gender, history, context etc., he ironically opens them up, reveals their formal daring, their, their philosophical depth, their proto-post-modernist concern with the reader, the author and the stability of the text. In a comment on Durrenmatt's 'The Pledge' recently, I sarcastically referred to Christie as a modernist; after Bayard's book I stand disgraced.

so although this book's novelty and selling point is the idea that Christie got it wrong, that the solution to her most ingenious and controversial novel doesn't make much sense, it is really a celebration of how Christie got it innovatively right for decades, an achievement that went unnoticed because, as a writer of puzzles, she didn't produce the kind of books that get reread, unlike those of Flaubert and Tolstoy. so Bayard's book is also a celebration of the detective genre, a theoretical analysis of its structures of meaning, showing how they actually undermine their ostensible purpose, the restoration of order and clarity (e.g. the narration of any detective story is always an instance of bad faith, constructing false worlds in order to trick the reader).

The book is also a case for revivifying the waning practice of (specifically Freudian) psychoanalysis, especially in reading literary works - after all, the work of psychoanalysts and detectives, uncovering events in the past by an examination and interpretation of clues or signifcant events, are very similar (ditto literary critics).

Most ambitiously, it is a book about the acts of writing and reading - in a performance of Barthesian magnanimity, Bayard shows how Christie destroys the structures and assumptions of conventional narration, thereby liberating the imaginative and interpretive powers of the reader willing to take up the challenge. In finding links between detective work, theory construction and clinical delusion, Bayard endearingly begins chasing his own tail, and the book will be invaluable to readers of Raymond Queneau.

But, most pressingly, the book remains true to its promise - the self-sufficient theoretical analyses (largely readable, although I made heavy weather of the 'delusion' section) are firmly in the service of the book's mystery - who, then, really did kill Roger Ackroyd? - which in itself is constructed like an Agatha Christie-style mystery, with clues followed up, discarded or co-opted before a final, Poirot-like flourish, which is immensely satisfying, both at the level of the crime genre and the original novel, and and on that of open-ended, philosophical speculation. It'll make you rush to Christie's books with renewed awe.