90 years of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Tuppence
City of London, United Kingdom
in All stories
Tuppence
City of London, United Kingdom
Comments
Were there any other mystery writers before Agatha Christie came onto the scene that made the narrator the murderer? Or was A.C. the first mystery writer to pull this trick
I agree with @ChristieFanForLife . The surprising ending, the wll built characters, the ingenious narrative make The Murder of Roger Ackroyd a classic novel!
Everything is perfect. I love Caroline. she's amazing! A true detective!
And it's one of the best Poirot's case. It's challenging, but he solves it in a brilliant way. Again, you're righ@Griselda, "Poirot is shown at his best".
I agree that Caroline is very good, and her words give an alternative detective outlook: she has the feminine intuition.
I think my favourite not-seen-at-the-time clue, SPOILER, is when Poirot tells Sheppard that he hadn't seemed surprised to learn that Flora had never gone into the study at all. The way language is used, you can almost feel Poirot having an intense, interrogating-yet-restrained moment as he looks to find out what the response of the doctor will be. I think what is good about the characterisation is that one gets a sense of a person with dreams and ambitions beyond the role which they play in the novel. I'm thinking of Flora and the dream to go sailing and stuff with Ralph, and, also the sense of freedom when she learns she will gain the £20,000. The housekeeper has quite a fascinating back story which one can mull over and think about not in the context of the action of the novel.
I think that Christie is certainly very good at creating character from a few brief but well-chosen words - hence with the housekeepers son.
By the way, Tuppence, regarding the website, I have noticed that when I click post, the formatting often removes my paragraph breaks. I don't bother to use paragraphs every time, anymore, as I know they will be erased. Can this technical issue be fixed?
By the way, it's very funny Poirot's first impression on Dr Sheppard. He thought Poirot was a retired hairdresser! "There's no doubt at all about what the man's profession has been. He's a retired hairdresser. Look at that moustache of his",
I suppose, that strictly speaking, people don't read a novel because it is good, or because the characters are good:they don't know that it will be good before they read it. Although, that said, some people may read a book twice, because they liked it the first time. What will happen, I imagine, is that they see a dramatisation on television, and then they read some blurb on any Agatha Christie book, and it will say that The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is regarded as Christie's masterpiece - and thus it happens that they will decide to read it.
My hunch, is that the plot twist and the perplexing mystery of how the man was killed in his room when many had alibis - that is the mystery. The phone call to Dr Sheppard is a galling mystery too. I think this because actually there is a fair amount of old-fashioned detail in this novel, which might, under different circumstances, put off modern readers if the plot were not so good. Servants, walks in woods, history about how a rich man made his money. It is not easily relatable, and even Flora's romance with Ralph is not a great one to beguile the reader. The plot is what never ages.
By the way, Tuppence, just to be helpful about what would make this website better, I think this thread has dropped off the radar and gone a bit stale because there has been no moderator input to push along discussion. Now would be a good point to contribute some interesting information such as:
what famous people have said, over the years, about the novel
interesting quotes from actors who starred in the television adaptation
quotes about it - fresh to public view, if possible - from Dame Agatha
plans to do fresh television adaptations
a summary of Poirot' dealings with Hastings, for readers who have read Poirot's
references to Hastings which he makes in the novel
a summary of the Sherlock Holmes and side-kick theme - maybe ask one of your writers to write an article on the side-kick theme, and how AC toyed with it with Hastings, but then seemed to kill it off by having Dr Sheppard as a side-kick, and then...well SPOILER.. we know what happened to the arrangement in this novel - and why Poirot is better, if he is, without a sidekick (including Ariadne Oliver)
By the way, for interesting articles one of your writers could write for the website, how about ones about that man in the novels who goes and finds out information to help Poirot. Think his name begins with G, and he is a private detective. He features in The Pale Horse.
I have thought of something else effective about TMORA, the voice of the narrator is not a million miles away from Lionel, the vicar, in Murder at the Vicarage; his judgements, tone and treatment of human subjects are sort of assimiable with what we get from other narrators: the set the context of the world of Christie stories: sensible, unhysterical, comfortably middle class. This is why it comes as such as shock that the gently humorous friend who has led us by the hand through the story, is SPOILER, the one who did it!
Another theme I notice, is yet another Irish connection: Ursula Bourne is one of seven of a family of impoverished Irish folk. There was a thing called Anglo-Irish, the old English landowners, ( some of them hated by the indigenous Irish during the potato famine of the 1860s) who described themselves as Irish, but whose families, centuries before had been given Irish land as a thank you present by the English monarch of the time. They may have spoken with an English accent - we don't know. No character in MORA calls the parlourmaid Ursula 'Irish', so perhaps she didn't sound Irish. I feel this is a theme of AC, as I have suggested before, and used I'd surmise to denote a slighly impulsive, high-feeling sort of person. Note the fiancee of the SPOILER murderer in A Pocket Full of Rye is one of these gentrified types who grew up in Ireland, ( and falls for a bad-un because she doesn't think carefully about love) - and then, the 'heroine?' Henrietta in the mystery The Hollow comes across from Ireland. I guess Bess Sedgwick in At Bertram's Hotel might be one of these too, as she met Michael Gorman in Ireland, didn't she? I think the Irish angle gives Christie leeway to create a certain unpredictability of feeling and high spirit which can explain behaviour which runs outside the usual restraints charateristic of the English middle class and gentry of the day, anad hence she can get her plot to twist and turn somewhat through unexpected eventualities. Then she has the untrustworthy Irish, which I've mentioned before, who do people in, and, as in Taken at the Flood, can't be trusted at all in male or female form.
Perhaps we should get writing articles ourselves! lol.
With regard to your comment about The Narrator of TMORA and Lionwl's voices being alike perhaps Paul Eddingon who played Lionel and Oliver Ford Davies who played The Narrator of TMORA went up for the same parts which is why you think that although I agree with you.
What would be good is if the powers that be were to keep us informed of what is going on with the proposals the film crew are making for the new adaption, and what the AC team are going to suggest to the film directors, etc. It wouldn't spoil the fun of the final viewing, and it would create true engagement. After all, singers and actors often tweet snippets about the work they are doing. It keeps the fans interested, and why not?
I read some old posts from three years ago, and things were very much unmoderated then, too. They better be careful, because I noted that one poster had insulted a fellow contributor calling him a rude name. One of these days somebody is going to post something quite offensive, and it is going to upset readers, and cause unhappiness - not what anybody wants.
Just to reassure you, we are still here and listening to your comments. We absolutely want to keep you up to date with the development of Murder on the Orient Express and other adaptations and as soon as we have information that we can share with you, we certainly will.