In the Library
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Agatha Christie, 1926
- Form
- Form Novel
- Difficulty
- Difficulty Accessible
- Reading time
- Reading time 5 hours
- Chapters
- Chapters 27
- Length
- Length 70k words
£1.99
Read in the app, yours for good. Not yet by post.
The book unlocks on your account as soon as you buy it, so the 14-day right to cancel ends once it is unlocked.
In the public domain in the United States only: this edition is sold and read there and nowhere else.
The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to the seeker after it.
What buying means
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- Read in the app’s own reader, with the original beside the translation where there is one.
- Downloaded, so it reads with no signal.
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About the book
Roger Ackroyd is found in his study, the door locked from within, a curved Tunisian dagger in the back of his neck, shortly after a letter arrived naming the man who had blackmailed the woman he loved, a letter he never finished reading. Hercule Poirot has retired to the village of King's Abbot to grow the biggest marrows in England, and means to stay retired, until his new neighbour turns up murdered and the dead man's niece begs him to clear the name of the young man she loves. The case is narrated, in careful, companionable detail, by the local doctor keeping a diary of the investigation for posterity, a device detective fiction had used a hundred times before and never once made this dangerous. Agatha Christie built a whole book on the difference between a lie and an omission, and proved they can do the same damage to a reader's trust. Finish it and you will go straight back to page one, hunting the exact sentence that told you nothing but the truth.