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Finished Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, one of her Poirot novels and also among her personal favourites as listed in the "Clues to Christie" freebie.
Going in, I'd thought this might have been one of the ones which had a reputation for having a special twist to it (even if I wasn't quite sure if it was the particular twist I was thinking of), so I kind of kept on the lookout for it if indeed it was, and probably made a lot of subconscious assumptions as to whodunnit based on that.
In the end, the motivation and the howdunnit turned out to be a surprise, because even if I thought I knew whomighthavedunnit (and I did eventually start to think that I'd misremembered because all the evidence looked to be adding up differently), I couldn't quite figure out by what means or why the suspect I'd been keeping in mind would bother. But it all made sense in the end. And I did manage to guess one (out of the many) incriminating secrets that the suspects were holding back.
Highly recommended. This one actually provides a lot of plausible alternatives, while also plausibly eliminating them and setting up the reveal of the real murderer in a very clever and unexpected way. And it's also fun to see Poirot through the eyes of people for whom his reputation initially means nothing, in contrast to the admiring exasperation of Hastings, only to get to know him and his methods along the way as they get roped into assisting his investigation.
Now on to the next Poirot, The Big Four, which seems to have garnered a reputation for being one of the desperately sub-par ones. I'd thought about skipping it, but now I'm morbidly curious as to how terribad it is and it'll be interesting to see the transition from one of Christie's best to one of her worst.
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