The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was published in the United Kingdom in June 1926 and was Agatha Christie's third novel to feature Hercule Poirot. It had appeared in serial form the previous year in the London Evening News under the title Who Killed Ackroyd?, and an American edition followed within months. Christie was already well known by this point but not yet the institution she became, and the book is the one that made her reputation among critics as something more than a writer of puzzles.

The village setting is the book's other achievement. King's Abbot is a small community with a doctor, a housekeeper, a sister who manages the doctor's household, a retired major, a wealthy widow and a collection of servants, and the investigation is conducted through the ordinary fabric of village life: visits, meals, letters and gossip. Christie's plotting depends on the reader trusting the conventions of the form, and this novel is the one that tested how far those conventions could be pushed before they broke.

The book's place in the genre was established immediately and has been debated ever since. It regularly appears near the top of polls of the best detective novels, and the question of whether its solution is fair play or a trick has been argued about for a century. It is a standalone within the Poirot series and can be read without any of the others.