Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?

 

By Pierre Bayard (translated by Carole Cosman)

Hard-bound

Bayard is out to prove that the revealed murderer is not the actual murderer -- and no, I am not going to say who he fingers -- but that is not why I heartily recommend this book to devotees of murder mysteries.

I might not agree with his analysis of the story but I can say that I learned a lot about the genre of the detective story and things to think about while reading the stories. Detective stories are about deception, disguise and lies. It is the job of the narrator to tell you the truth while  hiding it at the same time; in other words, even the narrator is not trustworthy. 

Bayard is one of those college professors who is teaching his students how to think, how to not be afraid of rejecting the conventional wisdom in favor of , how to approach books and reading from multiple directions, for which I applaud him. On the other hand, he is also a psychoanalyst and as soon as he got into the psychoanalytic gobbledygook, I tuned out and skip right to the last chapters where he finally revealed who he thought the murderer was and why.

However, I cannot accept his conclusion and will continue to go along with Christie's  solution because  that is the story that Christie wrote. Yes, his conclusion fits the facts and Christie could have equally as easily made  X the murderer, but that is not the story she chose to write.  Fun to explore the alternatives but in the end, as far as I am concerned, it is the author running the show.

3.5 Stars