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    The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie: A Story Grid Masterwork Analysis Guide
    The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie: A Story Grid Masterwork Analysis Guide
    The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie: A Story Grid Masterwork Analysis Guide
    Ebook153 pages1 hour

    The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie: A Story Grid Masterwork Analysis Guide

    By Sophie Thomas

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    About this ebook

    A murder. A master detective. A gathering of suspects. Between the covers of a book or on the big screen, is there anything more compelling than a great crime story?


    In the expert hands of Agatha Christie-one of the world's bestselling novelists-every crime and every search for justice became a work of art. Story Grid Editor an

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStory Grid Publishing LLC
    Release dateMay 12, 2021
    ISBN9781645011347
    The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie: A Story Grid Masterwork Analysis Guide

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      Book preview

      The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie - Sophie Thomas

      1) WHAT IS THE GENRE

      You’ve got a character who breaks the law, a character who wants to figure it out, and twists and turns along the way. The primary forces of antagonism are external, meaning the protagonist is battling someone or something outside himself primarily. A character is pursuing justice and a criminal is pursuing injustice—or his own sense of justice, which is at odds with society’s.

      You’ve got a Crime story on your hands.

      What kind of Crime story are you writing? While readers of Crime stories share a common interest in seeking intrigue and upholding the value of justice, we prefer different settings (such as a Historical Crime like The Name of the Rose), protagonists, inciting crimes (a heist, for example), and methods of investigation. Murder Mystery is one subgenre of Crime.

      If you have a dead body, chances are you’re writing a Murder Mystery.

      SUBGENRES OF MURDER MYSTERY

      Murder Mysteries themselves have sub-subgenres. What are the different types of Murder Mystery?

      Master Detective: This is where The Murder of Roger Ackroyd fits in. The Investigator character is the protagonist. Hercule Poirot, Holmes, and Columbo are all classic examples.

      Cozy: The protagonist/investigator is an untrained, charming character in a cozy environment, quite opposite of the Master Detective and Hardboiled investigator in every way. Christie’s Miss Marple is an example of the amateur sleuth. She’s a sweet grandmotherly type in whom people tend to confide trustingly. Murder She Wrote’s Jessica Fletcher is the writer-turned-detective from an idyllic (but murderous) New England town. Angela Lansbury drew on Christie’s Miss Marple character to create amateur detective Jessica Fletcher in the iconic Cozy TV series. A cat can even be a protagonist—and Cat Cozies have a strong following (e.g., The Cat Who Could Read Backwards). Other examples of cozy mystery sleuths include G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown, Dorothy Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey, and Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce.

      Historical: This is for the reader who wants to get lost in a historical time and place while solving the murder. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco and the Cadfael series by Ellis Peters are some masterworks to check out.

      Noir/Hardboiled: The protagonist is a cynical antihero. If you’re interested in these characters, Double Indemnity by James M. Cain may be your masterwork.

      Paranormal: There are paranormal characters and tropes, such as vampires and ghosts. The True Blood (Sookie Stackhouse) series is an example featuring vampires.

      Police Procedural: In this popular subgenre, the protagonists are the police detectives, as you find in the Vera Stanhope series by Ann Cleeves or Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse, as well as the Law & Order franchise.

      Agatha Christie, the Queen of Mystery, has dominated the Cozy sub-subgenre with the Miss Marple mysteries and the Master Detective Murder Mystery sub-subgenre with her Hercule Poirot stories.

      As we will see through the analysis, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a great example of the Master Detective subgenre for its many Red Herrings, its unreliable narrator accompanying Poirot in following the clues, and the surprising resolution in justice. All the while, we are in the capable hands of Hercule Poirot, as he challenges every detail that seems certain but uncorroborated through the retelling of the crime. The more certain we are that the clues fit neatly together, the more we find we are actually operating under the masterful redirection. When it seems as if a toddler has knocked our carefully constructed puzzle off the table and scattered all the pieces, we are actually closest to the truth as we pick up all the pieces and turn them back over. Assumptions are examined, witness statements and alibis are scrutinized, and clues are exposed for the Red Herrings they truly are.

      Only a Master Detective can do this to satisfaction.

      2) WHAT ARE THE CONVENTIONS AND OBLIGATORY MOMENTS OF THE CRIME GENRE?

      The obligatory moments of any genre are scenes that have been so intricately woven into the DNA of the genre over thousands of years of storytelling that they define the genre. When a reader picks up a Love Story, she expects a lovers meet scene and a lovers’ first kiss or intimate connection scene. These events must be on the page. If the writer promises in the course of the story that two people are going to fall in love, but they never have a moment when they run into each others’ arms or send a passionate letter, the reader is going to be very

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