Qui a tué Roger Ackroyd ?

by Pierre Bayard

Penzler Pick, August 2000: Edmund Wilson, the famous literary critic, once inquired disdainfully (in an essay explaining his inability to develop the mystery-reading habit), "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" In a single sentence, with its reference to the notorious plot of Agatha Christie's sixth novel, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, he struck deep at the collective spirit of a community of like-minded souls: the detective fiction readers of the world. Ever since 1926, when the novel in question was first published, helping to insure its author's reputation as the ruling queen of crafty crime, mystery fans have indeed cared. Passionately.

But until the arrival of this provocative rereading of the case, written by a psychoanalyst and translated from the French, it is likely that not one of them ever doubted the validity of the solution as worked out by the redoubtable Hercule Poirot. After all, if the author's own detective had incorrectly followed the clues laid down for him, what kind of unsteady ground was the reader left standing on?

Although Bayard makes it clear that those picking up his book don't necessarily have to return to the original text--he does give a very concise summary of the principal characters and actions of Christie's story--it is an exercise, really a pleasure, that I urge you toward. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is such a landmark of the genre that it is not just a bit of nostalgia, a form of genial time travel, but also a reminder of what the Golden Age of the mystery novel was all about: the matching of wits between writer and reader, with puzzles that truly puzzled and were made all the more satisfying by the operative credo of fair play.

To address the actual plot of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is to risk spoiling the fun. Let's just say there is an English village, King's Abbott, in which a bluff country squire, the much-mentioned Ackroyd, resides until his untimely death, [stabbed] by an unknown assailant. Unfortunately for the murderer--or so one used to think, pre-Pierre Bayard--there is also in the village a retired Belgian police inspector, the unparalleled M. Hercule Poirot. Poirot's celebrated "little grey cells," those he uses to form his theories of a case, steadily power the investigation to its startling conclusion, one that has always been as magnificent for its shock value as for its apparently irrefutable logic. That Professor Bayard's delicate probing of the book's structure manages to turn it convincingly in a fresh direction, toward an actual murderer never even suspected, is a triumph of scholarship that is at once playful and serious.

How we approach classic texts should never be as static an experience as we generally allow it to be, a truth proved anew by Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? It now joins a list of other similarly clever literary treats, among which I include Rex Stout's "Watson Was a Woman" and Frederick Crews's The Pooh Perplex. --Otto Penzler

Genres: Mystery, Nonfiction, Agatha Christie, Crime, Books About Books, Mystery Thriller, Detective

192 pages, Pocket Book

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Pierre Bayard (born 1954) is a French author, professor of literature and connoisseur of psychology.

Bayard's recent book Comment parler des livres que l'on n'a pas lus?, or "How to talk about books you haven't read", is a bestseller in France and has received much critical attention in English language press.

A few of his books present revisionist readings of famous fictional mysteries. Not only does he argue that the real murderer is not the one that the author presents to us, but in addition these works suggest that the author subconsciously knew who the real culprit is. His 2008 book L'Affaire du Chien des Baskerville was published in English as Sherlock Holmes was Wrong: Re-opening the Case of the Hound of the Baskervilles. His earlier book Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? re-investigates Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. His book on Hamlet which argues that Claudius did not kill Hamlet's father remains untranslated into English.

Reviews

[Nathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Way too many spoilers. This is written for an academic audience familiar with the entire Christie canon. I had to skip pages at a time to avoid list after list ruining twist endings.

[Corey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is truly a find. I recently recommended Bayard's other book (How to Talk About Books you Haven't Read) and am equally enthusiastic about this one. In this short but dense text, Bayard deconstructs one of Agatha Christie's most famous Hercule Poirot novels The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. (It helps to re-read Christie before embarking on Bayard.) Spoiler alert: for those of you who haven't read Christie--which is a mistake and you should add it along with The Mysterious Affair at Styles and The ABC Murders to your list of books-- this one became famous because the narrator, a respectable village doctor named Sheppard, turns out to be the murderer. It doesn't hurt your reading of the book at all to know this. In fact it helps, because the purpose of Bayard's book is to suggest that the narrator is not, in fact, the murderer at all. He points out several undeniable discrepancies both in Sheppard's narration and in Poirot's surprisingly porous investigation. Perhaps Bayard's best argument is that Sheppard does not actually ever admit to committing the murder. He does say he went to the house that night with the intention of killing Roger Ackroyd, but once accused by Poirot, never cops to the deed. This leads Bayard to accuse another major character in the book as the murderer, one Sheppard is protecting, and I have to say he is pretty darn persuasive, making Christie's book in my mind even more ingenious by this turn of events and does not detract in any way. Bayard lost me briefly in section three when his psychoanalysis turns on the reader and he spends just too much time explaining delusional reading and how we don't ever quite know what we're reading; it's clearly the start of this theories on non-reading that he explores in his other book, and while in that text it is interesting in this one it isn't. But setting that hiccup aside, I happily recommend this book. What better way to end the summer than by returning to Christie's world of village murders and drawing room revelations through this theoretical lens that Bayard proffers?

[Valentina Vekovishcheva · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have managed to crack the case the way Bayard did it while rereading Christie's book before going in for this one. Am I now a psycho like Bayard? Would be nice)

[Catherine Carpenter · Rating 1 out of 5]

Reads like a Doctoral Thesis in psychology. Filled with spoilers of almost the entire Christie oeuvre. And his new solution (I won't spoil it) is fairly lame and, like Christie, comes only in the final few pages. Christie, however, is entertaining.

[Meghan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Less dazzling than his later book in the same vein, Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong, but highly readable, clever, and ultimately persuasive

[Camilla tra le righe · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pierre Bayard ne sa tanto di psicologia, tantissimo, e ci tiene a fartelo sapere in un saggio che dovrebbe parlare sì dell'opera della Christie, ma chisse ne frega, lui è l'autore e lui decide di spaccarti il cervello con 3/4 di libro sulla psicoanalisi, perché lui è studiato e lui può dirti che Poirot è una persona delirante. Come scusa? Tu pensavi di leggere un libro su Agatha Christie e la sua opera più famosa? Cavoli tuoi. Il libro darà solo libero sfogo a l'ego smisurato di Bayard.

E lui sa tutto eh, quindi sa anche chi è il reale colpevole dell'opera della Christie, dandoti una spiegazione che se lui ritiene quella stabilita dall'autrice assurda, la sua è proprio fuori da questo mondo.

In aggiunta ti spoilera più o meno l'80% delle opere di Agatha Christie.

Un disastro senza precedenti. Fatevi un favore e non leggetelo.

[Fred · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely adore this piece of literary criticism. It is 145 pages of pure genius and total brilliance. Parts I, II, and IV (Investigation, Counterinvestigation, and Truth) are complex but accessibly written. Part III (Delusion) is where the book descends into psychology-textbook-territory, and whole bodies of pages become incomprehensible when read casually. As I affectionately said in my Reading Updates, this is either easy or impossible reading.

Most importantly, Bayard is funny, lighthearted, and accepting in his criticism. Indeed, his (baffling) chapters on Delusion at least end on a positive:

To treat a reading as delusional because it lacks such textual truth, or would impose its own truth against all probability, would lead us to neglect the essential instability of the literary work and give free rein to the real pathologies of reading that challenge this instability. For this reason, in the field of literary interpretation, we are not dealing with authentic delusion but with necessarily subjective feelings about whether a proposed reading is admissible or not.
Far from discouraging us, these conclusions can only increase our determination to solve the mystery we've posed. For if it is true that an intermediary world exists between the text and the reader, it is likely that the murderer of Roger Ackroyd has found refuge there. He has been living there secretly, since the creation of the work, in a deceptive tranquillity that is about to end.

Bayard argues that there is a world between the world of the text (and thus the author) and the reader.

The world produced by the literary text is an incomplete world, even if certain works propose worlds more complete than others. It would be more correct to speak of fragments of worlds, made up of parts of characters and dialogues, in which entire swaths of reality are missing. And - a crucial point - these blackouts in the world of the work are not due to a lack of information that may one day be supplied by research, as in the case of historical texts, but to a structural defect, namely that this world does not suffer from a lost wholeness since it never was complete. Due to this fact, the text is not legible if the reader does not give it its ultimate shape - for example, by consciously or unconsciously imagining a multitude of details that are not directly provided.

...giving us all the confidence we need to challenge Hercule Poirot's revelations of the murderer! Bayard's field is that we never truly know what we are reading, especially in crime novels. With all the clues and 'red herrings' dropped throughout crime, in the intermediary world between reader and author, several characters commit several hypothetical murderers for countless different reasons...until the novelist reveals the solution they have chosen. The task of hunting down allegedly unpunished literary criminals is to re-evaluate those clues and to find a (plausible) murder solution hidden in that intermediary world.

Bayard does extensively discuss psychoanalytic criticism (including, but not limited to, considering characters as part of psychic entities rather than individual people - Caroline/Miss Marple, Sheppard/Hastings, for example - and linking the author to said psychic entities) but I could not even begin to understand all of it. I strive to understand more about psychoanalytic literary criticism though; I am utterly fascinated by it.

I love this book. 5 shining stars.

P.S. I am now determined that, for years, Egg Lytton Gore has been hiding in the intermediary world between me and Christie's similar novel Three Act Tragedy. Poirot's murderer in that novel is definitely shielding her. Next time I reread it, I'll bear Bayard in mind and see if that reading works.

[Brad McKenna · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is not just one of my favorite Agatha Christie books but one of my favorite books of any genre. The ending is just so fantastic. The clues are there for the reader to pick up on, but you don't. Or at least I didn't. But Mr. Bayard is here to say, the very ambiguous writing leads to the wrong conclusion.

He actually refutes Dame Christie's ending...the one she has gone on record of saying is true. While I believe it true what they say "an artist loses ownership of her art when it's published." This means that readers are free to interpret the art as they see fit, even if it contradicts what the artist wanted to accomplish. Mr. Bayard takes this to heart.

Save for a lengthy foray into the details of psychoanalysis, this book was enjoyable. The "true" murderer was clever and because of the ambiguous writing, I find it plausible. Pure poppycock, but plausible.

It was a fun exercise but I think it was ridiculous to contradict Dame Christie. She has proven her writing prowess many times over and I'll take her word over a curious psychologist any day, especially when it comes to her books.

If you're a fan of Christie, this might be a fun read for you. But be warned, spoilers abound! You'll not want to read this book if you've not read the vast majority of the Christie Cannon. She uses the solutions of dozens of other books to back up his case, ruining the endings if you didn't already know them.

[Fabrice Conchon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who killed Roger Ackroyd ? Here is a book of meta-literature that is an essay about literature. And about the topic that I personally love : detective stories, and not any kind of detective stories, those of Agatha Christie.

The book has four parts, the fourth analysing - I should say re-interpreting - the novel The murder of Roger Ackroyd. The other three parts being thought or digressions about detective novels that would coalesce in the last part.

Part 1 and 2 are interesting as they, first summarise the book, the main characters and disclose, as a teaser, some of the oddities of the murder solutions offered by Hercule Poirot. They put the novel into perspective, comment on its specifications (like the "personality" of the narrator), compare it with other of Christie's book with an in depth analysis of Endless night.

Part 3 re-analyse the book, and detective stories in general via the prism of Freudian psycho-analysis. This is a very French thing (French are mad about psycho analysis) which is in my view debatable, and surely the least interesting part of the book. There are interesting things though like the presentation of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex or Shakespeare's Hamlet as a detective story, the incomplete nature of the literary text which is completed by the imagination of the reader, the different types of truth (of disclosure and of adequation, p108).

And finally comes the fourth part. After an introduction abut Christie's last published work Curtain, chapter two and free, the last two chapters of the book, explain Bayard's theory, opposed to Poirot's theory. There are a few thing to object to Bayard's theory (for example, he dismisses completely the moving of the chair, also his explanation of the phone call is not clear) but on the other hand, he gives a very seducing interpretation of the book, I should say an "elegant" one. The fact it is elegant does not make it truer, but surely makes us more keen on believing it, Bayard admit it himself p135 "This as (...) a certain beauty as it transforms a sordid story of money into a story of love". There is a symmetry between detective and murderer (is Poirot a murderer in this book because after all he kills Sheppard? Why does Christie links Caroline and Miss Marple ?), the dyad composed by he docteur and his sister (mother / son, decisive / indecisive) is also very elegant. He is right to highlight that one character in never questioned (alibi, whereabouts) which is unusual in Christie's novels. Overall, I would personally be tempted to by his solution rather than the author's one. An amazing feat !

But the most interesting thing in this book is precisely what Bayard never mention in the book and that I have been wondering during the whole reading. Bayard is obsessed with what is the truth of the book, is Poirot wrong, whom killed Roger Ackroyd. What I was wondering while reading the book was "Was Agatha Christie aware that, when writing her book, there was the possibility of a second interpretation of the murder ? Did she do it on purpose or was it accidental ? How come has it not been discovered earlier ? If this was not accidental, what did Christie fell when she realised that nobody never caught the double meaning of her novel ? Can this exercise be repeated with other of Christie's novel ? And finally, a question to myself : how to be objective, will I believe a truth over another because it is "truer" or because I am more sensitive to the latest argument that I have read or to the beauty of this truth ?

A lot of exhilarating mysteries for a book which is more interesting for the questions that it raises than for the answers that it brings. A fascinating reading !

Additional comments added after a book club where we were discussing this book. I was the only one being so enthusiastic about the book, the other people either "liking" the book or even strongly disliking the book. Why is that ?

First, most of the book club members complained that there were many spoilers of other Agatha Christie's book (like Endless night or Curtain). Also there were interesting different approaches about the book.

First, one of the members that just "love Poirot, has seen all the David Suchet programs and just thought that Poirot cannot be wrong, that Bayard's idea is completely bonkers". The theory where Caroline is the murderer must have been envisaged by Poirot - he is too clever for this to have escaped his attention - and disregarded as not plausible. This member strongly disliked the book.

With another member, I had a discussion of how a book, once written, escaped its author and allow the reader to make his own opinion. I strongly believe in this. My view of Madame Bovary is different from Flaubert's view and there is nothing that Flaubert can do, what drives such character to do such things might very well be explained in the novel, I, reader, can very well add an extra reason at the top of it if I feel like to. And I don't need to justify myself, this is just how I feel. Full stop !

This applies to many novels but detective fictions add extra constraints to this and it is sometime difficult to stick to the same opinion. Indeed, in detective book, you have a murder and the idea is to identify the murderer. The author makes great effort to build an extremely twisted plot that ends up at the very end with a solution that makes complete sense. Whoever wants to challenge this cannot just say "I think the murderer is X, not Y", he also needs to come with an explanation of how the murder was carried out that makes sense. And this is sometimes complicated, if not impossible.

Impossible ? That is what I thought and this is why I thought the book was so exceptional. But this is not what thought another book club member who believes that detective stories should be treated (almost) like other books. When you share your opinion about other books, you are also asked to justify it, the same applies to detective stories after all. And surely what Bayard has done could also be applied to other crime books (I didn't tried and I think it should be very difficult to do but this is just my opinion). This is why this other member had just a mixed opinion : what Bayard did was not exceptional, it is just a brilliant exercise that could be repeated.

And finally the question that we asked at the book club : Do you think Agatha Christie had the idea, when writing the novel, that it could be interpreted totally differently with a different murderer ? Joint answer : probably not but she would have probably have been very interested to hear about and she would have certainly not changed a line to this book after this.

[Selma · Rating 3 out of 5]

J'ai bien aimé cette relecture (avec une analyse philosophique par moments)

[Arda · Rating 4 out of 5]

İlginç bir çalışma ancak çeviri, eserin anlaşılırlığını birçok noktada sekteye uğratıyor.

[David Burkam · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating (but at times frustrating) read.

The author is at his best when (1) discussing the "rules" & aesthetics of detective fiction and (2) offering close readings of the texts, and at his worst when wandering into the worlds of psychoanalysis and post-modern literary criticism. While deconstructing delusion (a worthwhile activity), he fails to similarly reveal the constituent parts of lying or murder -- in particular the key notion of intentionality is woefully absent.

Alas the author makes a small but serious error when commenting about Ten Little Indians when he really meant Murder in Retrospect (Five Little Pigs in the British release).

[Ed · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really interesting re-evaluation of the Agatha Christie book "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" in which Bayard suggests that another character is actually the murderer, not the character accused by Poirot and accepted by posterity. Bayard compares "Ackroyd" to similar Christie novels ("Endless Night" and "Curtain") as well as other works such as "Oedipus Rex". He examines the nature of delusions, Freud's psychoanalysis and the act of reading. A fascinating evaluation of both the classic book and the relationship between reader and writer.

[Ludditus · Rating 2 out of 5]

Après avoir lu « La Vérité sur Dix petits nègres » et « L'affaire du chien des Baskerville » (lu en anglais : Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong: Reopening the Case of The Hound of the Baskervilles), je suis définitivement persuadé que la rigueur logique de Pierre Bayard est irrémédiablement éclipsée par son arrogance et par son extrême loquacité, cette dernière due au psychanalyste Bayard, pas au professeur Bayard. Et cela gâche tout.

Mettons que ça commence bien, et cette œuvre a le mérite, comme les deux autres mentionnées, d'expliquer au lecteur à quel point l'auteur d'un roman policier d'énigme (comme ceux d'Agatha Christie) peut tromper le lecteur et à quel point, dans ce cas précis, la solution proposée ne tient pas.

Pour résumer les éléments valides de cette analyse, je vais énumérer quelques moyens de tromperie et aveuglement du lecteur :
1. Le discours à double entente (le langage à double sens).
2. Le mensonge par omission (sinon la généralisation des omissions) et ce, sans points de suspension (une vraie tricherie !).
3. L'utilisation du récit à la première personne (quand cette personne n'est pas Hastings) et l'indécidabilité qui pourrait avoir lieu quand le narrateur passe aux aveux tardifs (parfois pas même explicites) ; voir le paradoxe d'Epiménide (« Je suis un menteur »).
4. L'abondance de faux indices, à laquelle s'ajoute la polysémie de ces indices.
5. La fausse cohérence du délire paranoïaque d'Hercule Poirot, apparemment d'une logique sans faille visible, mais subtilement biaisée.

Même en admettant que « Tout roman policier d’énigme, en effet, implique la mauvaise foi du narrateur », ce roman comporte des éléments particulièrement invraisemblables, dont je ne vais mentionner que les plus évidentes :
1. « Il est nécessaire que Paton, pourtant de passage à King’s Abbot, ait apporté plusieurs paires de chaussures, sinon il se rendra compte rapidement du vol... Comment Sheppard peut-il à l’avance en être sûr ? »
2. « La rocambolesque invention du dictaphone avec déclenchement retardé » et la fabrication fulgurante du mécanisme retardateur, « alors même qu’il s’agit d’un complexe objet de précision » et pour laquelle « Sheppard dispose au maximum de deux heures, dans une maison où Caroline ne lui laisse aucun répit et où il a peu d’espoir de s’isoler, pour fabriquer (nous sommes en 1926) ce qui est sans doute le premier radio-réveil de l’histoire des techniques ».
3. « Nous apprenons pendant l’enquête que le temps était sec et que c’est par hasard, grâce à un filet d’eau, que des traces de pas ont été identifiées. Or cela, Sheppard, au moment où il mettait au point son meurtre, ne pouvait en aucun cas le prévoir. »
4. L’histoire du coup de fil : « on peut se demander pourquoi il recourt à un procédé aussi compliqué, aussi aléatoire, aussi dangereux et aussi inutile. La complication est évidente. L’aléa tient au fait que toute la construction de Sheppard repose sur l’espoir que le steward n’oubliera pas de téléphoner. Le danger est amplement montré par ce qui arrive, à savoir que la police parvient aisément à identifier le lieu de l’appel. »
5. « Mais, surtout, le coup de téléphone est parfaitement inutile, et c’est en cela qu’il innocente Sheppard. Si celui-ci avait voulu se trouver sur place, il lui suffisait de faire ce que font tous ceux, y compris les personnages des autres romans d’Agatha Christie, qui souhaitent revenir en un lieu qu’ils viennent de quitter : feindre d’avoir oublié quelque chose, comme sa trousse ou un quelconque objet médical nécessaire à ses visites du lendemain. Méthode simple, sûre, n’impliquant aucune participation extérieure ni aucun mensonge que la police puisse exploiter. »
6. « Une autre source d’étonnement est l’attitude de Sheppard envers Paton. Comme on le sait, le médecin subtilise le jeune homme à l’enquête en le cachant dans un hôpital psychiatrique. Cette initiative peut s’expliquer si Sheppard protège le jeune homme. Elle devient plus énigmatique s’il est l’assassin, et, curieusement, Poirot ne revient pas sur ce point dans son accusation. En quoi le fait de dissimuler Ralph Paton aide-t-il au juste au déguisement de la vérité (ce que l’on voit bien lorsque Poirot fait sortir Paton de son asile) ? Sauf à le tuer à son tour, Sheppard ne peut espérer tenir éternellement Paton séquestré. Celui-ci libéré, la part prise par Sheppard dans sa dissimulation apparaîtra nécessairement. »
7. « L’attitude de Sheppard après les accusations de Poirot est tout aussi étrange. Cet homme qui est censé avoir froidement tué pour protéger sa sécurité ne songe même pas à nier la construction de Poirot, laquelle repose tout de même sur des bases très fragiles et ne s’appuie sur aucune preuve. ... Sheppard ... n’élève aucune protestation, remercie Poirot pour sa soirée et court se suicider. »
8. Sheppard en tant que maître-chanteur et le mobile du crime : pourquoi avoir tué Roger Ackroyd ? « En quoi au juste sa sécurité se trouve-t-elle menacée, et, dans l’hypothèse où elle le serait, en quoi le meurtre l’améliore-t-il ? Sheppard, s’il est coupable, ne risque pas grand-chose. Un maître-chanteur ne se fait pas régler par chèque et les mouvements de fonds ne pourront pas être établis. Par ailleurs, les confidences épistolaires d’une meurtrière – Mme Ferrars, dans sa lettre d’accusation, s’accuserait de l’assassinat de son mari –, morte de surcroît, risquent de se disqualifier elles-mêmes. Face à une lettre posthume d’accusation, l’attitude la plus raisonnable est de nier, mettant les accusations sur le compte du dépit amoureux ou de tout autre mobile, et renvoyant aux enquêteurs la charge d’une preuve qu’ils auront beaucoup de mal à établir en l’absence de la victime. A condition d’ailleurs – et là est le point le plus important – que le meurtre règle le problème. Car rien ne dit que Mme Ferrars s’est limitée à une seule lettre et n’en a pas envoyé une seconde, par exemple à la police. »
9. La personnalité de l’assassin. « Il s’agit manifestement de quelqu’un de décidé, tout à fait à l’opposé du pâle docteur Sheppard. »

Je ne vais pas dévoiler le vrai coupable selon Bayard (une belle tournure, mais cela pourrait être écrit en trente pages tout au plus), mais je remarquerai que ce livre devrait et pourrait avoir une dixième de son étendue, s'il n'était pas occupé à faire cocorico tout le temps, comme le grand coq de bruyère.

En ce qui concerne le vrai assassin, jamais soupçonné par les enquêteurs (aussi bien Hercule Poirot que la police officielle): « ce point est singulier, et probablement sans équivalent, dans toute l’œuvre d’Agatha Christie, où il est de tradition que l’emploi du temps de chaque personnage, surtout des moins soupçonnables, soit minutieusement vérifié. »

Pour donner une meilleure réponse à la question « qui a tué Roger Ackroyd ? », il n'y a pas besoin d'analyser « Œdipe roi » et son interprétation par Freud, suivie par les critiques apportées à Freud par Voltaire, Marie Balmary, Sandor Goodhart, et Shoshana Felman. De plus, il n'est pas raisonnable de faire appel à Lacan pour résoudre le paradoxe du menteur :

Comme l’a montré Lacan, ce paradoxe n’est pas insurmontable, à condition de prendre la peine de distinguer le sujet de l’énoncé et celui de l’énonciation. « Je mens » est prononcé à la fois sur le plan de l’énoncé et sur celui de l’énonciation, et le pronom « je » condense deux sujets au point d’en faire disparaître un derrière l’autre. Le « je » qui prononce la formule diffère du « je » de « je mens ». Dès lors, l’un est en mesure de dire le vrai dans le même temps où l’autre est déclaré menteur.

En fait, Bayard n'est ni mathématicien, ni logicien, ni philosophe (pas même avocat ou développeur de logiciels, deux métiers qui nécessitent une rigueur au niveau de la logique). Le paradoxe du menteur existe ou n'existe pas, selon le point de vue, mais ce n'est pas Lacan à avoir offert la meilleure perspective sur le sujet. Wikipédia n'éclaircit nullement le paradoxe. Si vous voulez ne rien comprendre, visitez la page Liar Paradox dans Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Si vous voulez commencer à comprendre un tout petit peu, il y a Le paradoxe et ses rapports avec les problèmes humains, par Jean-Curt Keller, qui mentionne parmi autres l'approche de Bertrand Russell. François Dutrait, dans Le jeu du mensonge et de la vérité, dans une approche linguistique et psychanalytique ou Lacan est roi, cite aussi Bertrand Russell et François Le Lionnais, mais ce dernier ne me satisfait nullement. Ainsi, il considère que la proposition contradictoire de « tous les Crétois sont menteurs » n’est pas « aucun Crétois n’est menteur », mais « quelques Crétois ne sont pas menteurs », alors qu'elle est « il y a au moins un Crétois qui ne ment pas toujours » (demandez à un mathématicien si vous ne me croyez pas). Depuis quand sont les psychanalystes et les linguistes les meilleurs logiciens ? Bon, un dernier lien (putain, Lacan est vraiment Dieu, il est omniprésent !) : La logique poétique de Jacques Lacan, par Gilles Chatenay, qui a le mérite de présenter quelques dessins très utiles dans la compréhension du fait que « Je mens » est en réalité « J'asserte que je mens », et que cette assertion est un après-coup, alors que « ... je mens » est une anticipation. Voici la clé du paradoxe d'Epiménide !

En parlant dudit délire paranoïaque d'Hercule Poirot, Pierre Bayard ne peut s'empêcher de dire que dans une écoute freudienne « Le délire est une formation de l’inconscient. » Tenez, une autre merde : « Attentive à de tels actes manqués textuels, la psychanalyse permet aussi de ne pas lire exclusivement les créatures de fiction à partir de la seule catégorie du personnage, et de prendre en compte des entités qui les transcendent ou les dépassent, des forces psychiques en action dans l’œuvre. Les mécanismes du déplacement et de la condensation peuvent ainsi faire surgir, à partir des personnages établis, des couples fantasmatiques, voire des figures composites, inimaginables autrement. » Mon Dieu, qu'il est assommant, ce crétin ! Au lieu d'une analyse logique, un bordel freudien.

Au lieu de perdre votre temps avec ce livre, je vous suggère de lire Pierre Bayard contre Hercule Poirot, derniers rebondissements dans l'affaire Ackroyd, par Marc Escola. Le vrai assassin y est, et le texte est beaucoup plus court.

[Christina Dongowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Das hat sich leider doch sehr hingezogen mit dem Lesen, und nicht nur wegen des Theorie-Französisch, das ich auffrischen musste, sondern vor allem, weil der Text in der Mitte einfach zu geschwätzig ist und durch Psychonanalyse und das Werk Christies mäandriert, ohne dass das wirklich dazu führt, dass der Fall gelöst wird. Im letzten Drittel nimmt es dann wieder ordentlich Fahrt auf und macht wirklich Spaß zu lesen — und überzeugt auch als Theorie der Interpretation nicht nur von klassischen Detektivromanen (jedenfalls mich).

[Prakash · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book proposes a very tasty alternate solution which shows considerable promise. The psychologic profile fits better, the choice of suicide by Shephard becomes more logical, introduces a love component to the story, the entire ridiculous business with the dicataphone is not needed. But it fails.

The book proposes Caroline Shephard as the murderer with Dr. Shephard as the blackmailer explaining she killed Ackeroyd to protect her brother. Many things fit perfectly but not the clue of displacement of the 'Grandfather Chair'. If Caroline killed Ackroyd, why did she displaced the chair. And why did Dr. Shephard put the chair back to its original position after discovering the murder. If she didn't displace it then who else? This thought is not even discussed in the book.

This book (which has material worth only some pages related to the book) also discusses a lot of spoilers for other books. Don't read this book if you don't want Christie's other books to be spoiled.

[Ebtihal Salman · Rating 3 out of 5]

هذا الكتاب هو ترجمة القول ان القراءة عملية ابداعية منتجة.

يبدأ بيار بالحديث عن فن القصة البوليسية، ما الذي يجعل منها قوية وناجحة، قبل ان ينطلق في تحليل النموذج.

ولا يكتفي بيار بقراءة رواية أجاثا كريستي (مقتل روجر اكرويد)، بل انه يشكك ويطرح التساؤلات فيما يحللها، ويستفيد من مساحة التأويل الموجودة فيها ليعرض وجهة نظر جديدة عن امكانية حل آخر للقصة. انه يستفيد من العلامات في القصة، ومن اصول الرواية البوليسية (وخرق أجاثا لها)، لكنه يضيف ايضا لمسة التحليل النفسي ليصل الى جوابه الخاص (من القاتل). وقد كان مقنعا جداً!

يستعين بيار بمزيد من الامثلة من روايات اجاثا ويعقد المقارنات في المجريات والمعطيات والاستنتاجات ليبرهن نظريته في خطأ الاتهام الذي قدمته في رواية مقتل اكرويد. ويشمل ايضا تحليلا قصيرا لمسرحية سوفوكل (عقدة اوديب) باعتبارها نموذجا للتحقيق البوليسي ليحاول اثبات ان اوديب ليس قاتل ابيه.

الفصل الذي تحدث عن الهذيان بدا لي هيروغليفيا. فيما عدا ذلك فهذا كتاب جميل جدا انصح به للمهتمين بالقصص البوليسية وايضا لمن يفكر بكتابة قصة بوليسية.

[Bev · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. Not nearly as good as anticipated. I can't get over his declaration that Poirot is delusional (sorry if that spoils it for you). And I see no reason why it's better to say that Sheppard "just knew" that Ackroyd had been murdered because he _didn't_ get a phone call from Ackroyd (and that's why he hot-footed it over there) than to believe Poirot that Sheppard set up the phone call to cover his need to get back to the scene of the crime.

Otherwise, I could go along with his selection of alternate murderer (and will even admit that the psychology fits better).

[Bahar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Agatha Christie'nin sunduğu önerme ve yöntem akademik bir bakış açısıyla çok sağlam bulgularla eleştirilmiş. Fakat yazarın alternatif olarak sunduğu önerme de tıpkı orjinalini eleştirdiği noktalarda olduğu gibi tamamen yorum ve yönlendirmeye dayalı kalmış. Eksik bilgi verilerek yalan söyleme üzerinden yazılan bir polisiyede sonuca gitmenin imkansızlığı noktasında kalınabilirdi.

[Eustacia Tan · Rating 4 out of 5]

How could I pass up a book about one of Agatha Christie’s books?

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is one of Christie’s most famous works, with its ending stoking controversy over whether Christie had played fair with her readers. So I was very intrigued when I read the blurb of this book, which claims that Christie might have been “manipulated by her narrator” and promises to reveal who truly murdered Roger Ackroyd.

What I expected from this book was a persuasively argued case that would make me rethink Christie’s work. What I got was slightly different.

Who Killed Roger Ackroyd is divided into four parts:

1. The investigation – relooking the case, examining the instances where Christie uses the “lie by omission” and discussing the Van Dine Principle; that a shrewd reader should be able to see through the red herrings in a case.
2. Counterinvestigation – Bayard digresses from The Murder of Roger Ackroyd to look at another Christie novel: Endless Night; and to discuss the improbabilities in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.
3. Delusion – This was perhaps the least interesting part of the book for me, as Bayard spends a lot of time talking about delusion and its relationship to theory and criticism
4. Truth – Looking at Curtain, the last book that Christie wrote, Bayard puts forth his theory as to who really killed Roger Ackroyd.

Now for the million-dollar question: was this book persuasive? To me, not really. The third section on delusion lost quite a bit of my interest, and Bayard didn’t spend enough time on his theory for the last section to regain my interest and persuade me to believe that another character was the true murderer. Bayard seems to rely on the argument that Dr Shepherd does not have the character to be a murderer to prove he is not a murderer, but the lie by omission could also include greater faults in his character. Could not Dr Shepher, as the narrator, paint an intentionally sympathetic picture so that we don’t wish to indict him?

In the end, I think this book provided something that I wasn’t expecting. While I enjoyed the discussion about other Christie books and think they could provide an alternative way to view The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, there was too much unrelated theory, which I wasn’t really interested in. Still, I think fans of Christie who are already familiar with her other works will enjoy this book for the overall discussion of the Christie canon.

This review was first posted at Eustea Reads

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an incredibly fun treatise on one of Agatha Christie's most famous works, and it makes me want to get back into reading literary criticism again. It is hard to write a review without spoiling the original novel or Bayard's creative alternate solution, but if you are a fan of Christie in general and this work in particular, then this one is worth skimming.

Christie reveals her killer in the final pages of her most masterful twist ending, and at first I scoffed at the idea of anyone poking holes in her theory, but Bayard does a creditable and textually-supported job of challenging it. He begins by arguing that detective fiction is by definition filled with alternative theories and that the author's final solution is merely one of many and is only true in so far as it is supported by facts and probabilities. He then brings in various physical improbabilities relating to Christie's proposed solution (many of which had never occurred to me) and of course he brings in Poirot's famous ideas of psychology in order to bring his readers to the point of being able to question the traditional solution before bringing out his own. He waffles a bit in theory about the nature of delusion and psychoanalysis in the middle in order to lengthen his essay-length argument into the bare minimum for a book, but the final conclusion holds together fantastically well and has a chilling final argument worthy of the Grand Dame of mystery herself. I wish more people would spend time analyzing my favorite books, appropriately enough, to death.

[Bahman Bahman · Rating 2 out of 5]

"اگر کسی بخواهد رمان پلیسی را با تاریخچه اش توضیح دهد مرتکب دو اشتباه شده است. نخست آنکه پذیرفته است که سه عامل اساسی رمان پلیسی یعنی جنایتکار، قربانی و کارآگاه به نحوی عارضی با تحول جامعه به وجود آمده اند و به دلیل نبوغ ناگهانی ادگار پو در یکجا دور هم جمع شده اند و دیگر آنکه پذیرفته است که رمان پلیسی دایم تغییر شکل داده است و به ترتیب به رمان دارای معما، رمان دلهره آور، رمان سیاه و غیره تبدیل شده است. اصلا چنین نیست. اگر رمان پلیسی وجود دارد اول به دلیل این است که ما موجوداتی متفکر هستیم که به صورتی خاص ساخته شده ایم. جسد مقتولی اینجاست. سگی قادر است به سرعت قاتل را بیابد. حاجتی به نطق و بیان نیست. همان بو کافی است. روحی ناب هم، همچنین، می تواند فورا قاتل را پیدا کند. در اینجا نیز احتیاجی به نطق و بیان نیست. ذهنی به دور از مسائل زمان و مکان، قادر است با ادراک شهودی به حقیقت دست یابد."

[Booksingarden · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book assumes that the reader has read all of Agatha Christie's mysteries. He reviews not only The Murder of Roger Ackroyd but touches on many of her other mysteries. He hypotheses that someone else is the true murderer, offering one candidate who any reader would surprise no one and a second who will probably surprise many. I enjoyed these musings but did not appreciate the way that he drags in Freud and psychoanalysis or some of his turgid prose.

[Clare Snow · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lit crit is so boring, but I'm glad I persevered

"All indicators make it desirable, then, to reopen the investigation."

And all indicators point to: Poirot got it wrong

[Kerri Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting look into the methods that make Agatha Christie books so good and how she used the element of surprise in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

[Thomas Gizbert · Rating 5 out of 5]

...for if it is true that an intermediary world exists between the text and the reader, it is likely that the murderer of Roger Ackroyd has found refuge there. He has been living there secretly, perhaps, since the creation of the work, in a deceptive tranquility that is about to end.

This is my third of Bayard's little insanities, and my favourite so far. It's an examination of Agatha Christie's oeuvre, and at the same time a meditation on detection, concealment, the search for truth, and the creation of meaning.

It's divided into four sections: Investigation, in which Bayard summarises The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and sets out the rules and conventions of the golden age detective mystery with completeness and great love for the genre; Counterinvestigation, in which Bayard explores the implications of the narrator being the murderer, and what it means for the trustworthiness of the mystery text; Delusion, a foray into psychoanalysis and the psychopathology of reading, by way of Oedipus Rex (my least favourite part, but still a lot of fun); and Truth, in which Bayard proposes his alternative solution.

Overall, I found the proposed solution less satisfying than that proposed in Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong: Reopening the Case of The Hound of the Baskervilles, though I enjoyed this book much more. The golden age of detective fiction is formally much more interesting than the Sherlock Holmes stuff, and Bayard's theoretical exploration of it is fascinating.

Don't read this book if you're still actively engaged in reading the famous Christie works, like Ackroyd, Death on the Nile, Murder on the Orient Express, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Peril at End House, or Death in the Clouds. These and many more are completely spoiled by Bayard in this book. If you're not likely to read another Agatha Christie for a while, though, and you're looking to engage with her work on a meta level, but you're a fan of the genre and its principles, then I'd absolutely recommend this book. Otherwise, if you're interested in a bit of fun analysis that's a little easier to get a hold of, try Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong: Reopening the Case of The Hound of the Baskervilles.

I'm going to read his Hamlet book next... just as soon as it's translated into English!

[Riq Hoelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the author's book on The Hound of the Baskervilles much better. This went off into too many tangents, especially the esoteric ones related to psychology.

[Ishan Manchanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Haven't read many such analyses and never planned to pick up the habit. My thoughts were largely - "the fictional world is the author's and their word is ground truth. Plot holes or similar things are mistakes that can be forgiven as long as they don't take much away from the enjoyment of reading. If they do detract substantially, simply drop the book and spend no more time on it."
However, I now recognize that this need not be the optimal outlook for multiple reasons. In some sense, it limits one from an active reading and engagement with the material. This may not be a huge loss for most fiction but then again it might be in some instances.

I picked this up from a review on Christie's book's Goodreads page. At the time I was going through the reviews, I was pretty unsatisfied with the ending as it seemed to conflict with Van Dine's rule(s) as I've mentioned in my review of the book. Reading this analysis definitely helped organize a lot of my thoughts and even pointed out several things I had missed, most of which were subtle issues in the original.

That's not to say this work is without fault. The sections which discuss spoilers to a huge number of other works in the mystery genre are simply ridiculous. They don't actually analyze any of those books in enough depth to add to the discussion, simply using them as examples or name drops which doesn't justify revealing their endings at all. I was thankfully forewarned of these from another review and skipped them systematically.
I also skipped or skimmed large sections which dealt with psychoanalysis.

Finally, I actually am partial to the possible ending presented here, if only slightly. Only of the biggest reasons is that it avoids the technological business with the dictaphone which seems fantastic (as in, rooted in fantasy). This was not something I had paid much attention to in my reading of the book, but the analysis does well in pointing it out and demonstrating how much hinges on this implausible plot device.

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

If Agatha Christi wanted a different murderer then that of Dr. Sheppard than she would have had Poirot expose that person instead of the doctor. Reviewers at the time of iis original release felt Christi was breaking form in making the narrator the murderer. I say this is proof of her writer's genius by breaking traditional form and thinking outside the box and also crediting her resolve to have the narrator commit the murder as well as blackmail. Bayard states Sheppard lacks a motive. I heartily disagree.. I believe Dr. Sheppard was tired of his small village and his controlling sister and her meddling cronies and therefore, when he saw a chance to make money off a wealthy widow he took it. I feel that when James tells Piorot his dreams of travel which fell through a year ago when he invested poorly and lost a legacy he received put him in a proverbial funk. As far as murdering Ackroyd he felt he had no other choice. If Ackroyd revealed him as a blackmailer his career in that small village would be over he would be finished. That's strong enough motive for me for him to commit the murder. Of course according to Bayard I as a reader am suffering from my own conceived delusions. Oh just as a sideline if you ever meet Mr Bayard at a cocktail party do not ask him on his
theoretical constructions of delusion. Believe me you will regret it. Another point I disagree on is his analysis that Piorot sffers from paranoid thought disorder. Which is just psychobabble for Piorot is off his rocker. On the contrary Christi makes a point in every one of his novels that he uses his little gray brain cells to solve the case. He is not paranoid just extremely logical and okay a little OCD. The first three parts of this book are so full of technical academic jargon it would bore most non academics and which I felt added too much pomposity.

[Ekin Açıkgöz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Agatha Christie'nin en çarpıcı - ve pek çok polisiye şablonunu yıkan - kurgularından biri olan Roger Ackroyd Cinayeti, elbette ki tüm polisiyeseverlerin bildiği bir eser.
Pek çok platformda tartışılan bu kurgu, bu kitapta derinlemesine irdeleniyor. Christie'nin yer verdiği detaylar tek tek inceleniyor ve yapmış olabileceği olası mantık hatalarına dikkat çekiliyor.
Bunlardan en çarpıcısı da şu: Kitabın başından beri doğru olmayan söylemlerde bulunan bir kişi güvenilmezdir. Peki bu kişiye kitabın sonunda neden güveniyoruz? Ya yalan söylüyorsa?
Enteresan bir bakış açısıyla yaklaşılıyor kurguya ve ayrıntılara.

Ancak düşüncelerin kitapta çok karmaşık aktığını söylemeliyim. Buna ek olarak çeviriyi de hiç beğenmedim. Dolayısıyla fikir değişik olsa da, neticede okuması çok yorucu ve kafa karıştırı bir kitapla başbaşasınız. Kolay gelsin diyorum.