Word: ackroyd
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Nonsense. What is far more likely is that at 85, Dame Agatha decided to enjoy one more triumph. If Curtain is not quite the revolutionary mystery that The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was in 1926, it is a major tour de force. Once again Christie has twisted the classic form in which she writes, and has come up with something new. Curtain is a shocker. It will cause intense, benign controversy and become an enormous bestseller. It is to be hoped that Queen Elizabeth has more ribbons in her closet to decorate this enduring and lonely symbol of British vitality...
...even doornails must know by now, the murderer in Ackroyd is the narrator, a genial village doctor. No one had ever pulled that trick, and there are purists who still argue that the author cheated. But if the device came as a revelation, the source should not have. Six years earlier, Christie had broken ground modestly in her first book, The Mysterious Affair at Styles; the villain was the first and most obvious suspect, from whom attention had long since been diverted...
Well and good. But who cares who killed Roger Ackroyd? The answer is, more will after they have read Higgins, though one should be careful to point out that a crime novel is hardly Crime and Punishment. It is not a perilous exploration of society's swamps or the deeps of the soul, but a fast ride through the fun house. Scenery is shifted and repainted, old frights are given new faces. The paying customers disembark laughing about something else after the predictable 200 pages, never having been in danger...
...into his apartment and his life. His exwife, his son, his parents, even his psychiatrist-all appear to Hibben in his delirium, prodding him inexorably toward the unpleasant Krafft-Ebing revelation concealed behind that coy yellow band. In the denouement there are traces both of Psycho and the Roger Ackroyd device: Are you sure you should trust the narrator? But Ellin conceals his key surprise in a phonetic note written by a distracted Mexican housemaid: Noscool sonic comic loc. Work that out and the solution may fall into place. Since the note appears on page 21, well before the band...
Years ago, when Edmund Wilson wrote an acerbic essay on mystery novels, his title - and his theme - was "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" The same skepticism might be directed toward a subspecies of the mystery genre known as the caper story, wherein a skilled handful of professionals try to steal a certain invaluable object from a certain impregnable fortress. The trouble with such yarns is that they tend to be about mechanics, not people. Unable to believe in the characters, who could care that the fuse won't light or the tumblers won't fall...