The Murderer Who Eluded Hercule Poirot and Deceived Agatha Christie.
When Agatha Christie published her masterpiece 'The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd' she confounded the conventions of the detective story by asserting that her narrator, Dr Sheppard, was the killer. But when faced by Hercule Poirot in a typically grandstanding finale, Sheppard reacts to Poirot's accusation with astonishment, and with good cause: the punctilious Belgian detective's solution of the crime is as motiveless as it is impractical.
This is the starting point in Pierre Bayard's clever, affectionate tribute to the Queen of Crime. Bayard asks the question: might Poirot have got it wrong? And if so, why might he have been mistaken? Did Christie herself understand the ending of her own book or was she too being manipulated by her narrator?
In a display of literary intrigue worthy of Umberto Eco or John Sutherland, Bayard plots his own solution, faithfully following the devices of Agatha Christie's original in this deft, smart homeage. And, in his own denouement he finally answers the question first posed by Agatha Christie seventy-six years ago: who really killed Roger Ackroyd?
