The Murder of Roger Ackroyd 羅傑‧艾克洛命案

Aug 29, 2006

I finished Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. The ending is not very surprising, I don't know why but I always expected this. I remember I read a novel by James Patterson. In that novel, sorry I forgot the name but I was very surprised at that time when the "I" died and there was a shift of another "I" in the story. Especially the "I" is the killer. This mysterious crime story, the plot is very good and complicated. I think in Ms. Christie's novel, all crimes are caused by a motive, and this motive is usually greedy and lies. The so-called common evils. This is the 2nd books I read with detective Hercule Poirot. The first one is Oriental Express. It seems to me that he has very strange way to tackle criminals. No accuse in Oriental Express. Allowing suicide in Roger Ackroyd.

I like Agatha Christie stories. I didn't dare to read when I was very young. Probably because reading English writers' stories cause problems like remember NAMES. It's very difficult especially their name has first, last and middle names. When translated into Chinese, there will be many characters. For Chinese names, we usually have 3 characters only, no more than 5. So LONG NAMES are difficult for me to remember.

I found this little information in Wiki.

History has been much kinder to Christie, crediting her for an original idea. From that point on, the detective fiction mantra that "it is the reader's duty to suspect everyone" took on a new meaning.
Pierre Bayard's book Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?: The Mystery Behind the Agatha Christie Mystery (2000) (ISBN 1-56584-677-X) argues that Poirot actually got the solution wrong and proposes an alternative solution.

Does it mean There can be another killer other than Dr. Sheppard?

I will stop reading "chinese" books for a time being. I should read some English novels.