The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) is a detective novel by Agatha Christie. The book, set in the fictional village of King's Abbott in England, features the detective Hercule Poirot.
The story is told in the first person by Dr James Sheppard. It begins with the death of Mrs. Ferrars, a wealthy widow who is rumored to have murdered her husband. Her death is initially believed to be suicide until Roger Ackroyd, a widower who had been expected to marry Mrs. Ferrars, dies. The suspects include Ackroyd's niece, Flora, Major Blunt, a big-game hunter, Geoffrey Raymond, Ackroyd's secretary, Ralph Paton, an adopted son with gambling debts, and Parker, a snooping butler.
The book is most notable for its surprise ending in which it is revealed that the narrator is the murderer:
- I am rather pleased with myself as a writer. What could be neater, for instance, than the following: "The letters were brought in at twenty minutes to nine. It was just ten minutes to nine when I left him, the letter still unread. I hesitated with my hand on the door handle, looking back and wondering if there was anything I had left undone."
Edmund Wilson alludes to this novel in the title of his well-known attack on detective fiction, "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" Pierre Bayard 's book Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? (2000) (ISBN 1-56584-677-X) argues that Poirot actually got the solution wrong and proposes an alternate solution.
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