The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

                When the idea of blogging cropped up in my brains, the purpose of this blog and its posts were pretty vague to me. But one thing was lucid; I was determined not to review books or movies, because whatever one’s opinion be, on these two, there will definitely be another, completely contrary to the first. However there has to be exceptions to any rule and the exception to my rule has the name

                                                    

                                           ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’

That is what the cover looks like !!

                If you are a bookworm or if you like crime novels and if you have not read this book so far, then do not read this blog post any further. Buy this book, read it first and then read this post. You must be thinking that I’m insane, to shoo away the very little readers by poor blog has. But trust me if you read the book you’ll definitely boomerang to this post, read the post  and will either totally agree with me or totally disagree with me. Just black and just white- no shades in between.

 Ok Badhri, enough of bullshit, take the plunge.

                ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’ is written by Agatha Christie and was published first in 1926. I went to Crosswords, a bookstore, last week. There were two racks  named ‘Crime/Mystery’ and one rack was filled with Agatha Christie’s novels. She, simply, is the Queen of Crime. And this book is her Masterpiece.

                Just like, almost, every other Christie’s work, there is a murder and the queer Hercule Poirot investigates it. After reading each chapter, I went through it again in my mind just to make sure that I did not miss any clues provided by the author. Before this book I had read 8 Christie’s  and not even once I succeeded  in identifying the murderer (yup pretty dumb on my part ;) ). This time I was determined to guess the murderer right, before she announces it.

                But I daresay I failed miserably. Don’t think that I’m modest or something. I could never have guessed it because, Dr. Sheppard is the murderer, and that bloody person happens to be the NARRATOR.

                Not even a single cell in my brain could possibly have guessed that narrator could also be framed as a murderer. After reading this book I felt, what do they call, betrayed. And so did lot of others who initially read this book in the 1920’s. There is an unwritten rule that narrator should be truthful and definitely not a murderer. But I(and you too :p) have to agree that Agatha Christie, once again managed to hoodwink us, bigtime. And this exactly is why, I think ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’ is considered her masterpiece.

                The first 350 pages of this book are just like any other crime novel and the last 20 pages are unlike any I have come across so far.

                This is the best crime novel I have read so far.( The best is always, Harry Potter, for some weird reasons) Before this, my most favourite Christie’s novel was ‘And Then There Were None’. 

And ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ is also worth the mention.

Recently one of my friends asked me this, in FB “Do you still like Christie’s books?”

I don’t know what she meant by it.

                

 But my answer is this : 

                 Yeah , Christie’s novels are always the same, almost. I have read nine so far and there are plenty of them left to be read. I’ll stop reading her novels, the very first day I guess the murderer right.....