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There's nothing like a classic -- they are classics for a reason. Kobo books is offering Agatha Christie novels at under $5 from Harper Collins which is as good an excuse as any to dip into The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, the second of Hercule Poirot's appearances. (The first is The Mysterious Affair at Styles which is in public domain.) This is one of the charms of growing older and the mind -- shall we be generous and say its ability to be selectively forgetful? -- providing the opportunity to re-read Sherlock Holmes and rediscover the clever trick of the snake and the bell pull.
And so it is re-reading, and re-discovering, the details surrounding Roger Ackroyd's demise. Good lord: I must have seen television versions of this, and I am certain somewhere along the line I have read the novel -- but what a treat to uncover the murderer in the final pages as Christie intended! Her prose throughout is gentle, and Poirot emerges fully formed, even in this second novel. It's charming, too, to encounter some of the turns of phrase locked to her era; the title was published in 1927.
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