In recent years I’ve chosen to read (or re-read) a classic detective novel to ease myself into each new year; ‘The Long Goodbye’ by Raymond Chandler and ‘The Talented Mr Ripley’ by Patricia Highsmith spring to mind, as do a couple of thrillers from the era of ‘noir’ which made no impact when published but are now considered to be classics. ‘Mr Bowling Buys a Newspaper’ by Donald Henderson was terrific (and is reviewed elsewhere on this website) and ‘Uncle Paul’ by Celia Fremln was awful. None of these diversions distracted me from my mission to read all seventy-odd Maigret novels by Georges Simenon.

This year marks both the centenary of the publication of one of Agatha Christie’s most famous novels, ‘The Murder of Roger Ackroyd’, and the fiftieth anniversary of Christie’s death.

I began to keep a diary in 1976. On January 12th I record:-
‘Agatha Christie died today aged 85. About twelve years ago I was Agatha’s Number One fan. Much to the chagrin of my English teacher (Peter Carlen), I would devour on average a Christie per week. It’s funny to look back on personal literary taste and how it changes. Last year I read ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ and the writing seemed almost comically stinted. Yet despite all her faults, Agatha Christie gave hours of pleasure to millions of readers. She was the ace and I doubt if anyone will ever match her.’
That was me as a 25 year old postman. I haven’t read a Christie since. I picked up ‘Ackroyd’ in a pristine second-hand, Collins Crime Club facsimile of the 1926 original from a charity shop a while back and began reading it a fortnight ago.

I loved it. Her third novel, the British Crime Writers Association voted it the best crime novel ever.

So far as the writing is concerned, the prose isn’t a patch on Simenon, there are none of Chandler’s thrills and spills and the characterisation isn’t as good as Highsmith. But Christie wasn’t trying to win a Nobel Prize for Literature and had little interest in descriptive prose. She wrote mysteries rather than thrillers, puzzles set in her own middle-class, middle-England world where retired military men abounded along with red-cheeked damsels, butlers, plodding policemen and awfully posh, once beautiful older women who were either clutching their pearls or pruning the roses.

This meticulously plotted novel had me captivated and the only reason why the dramatic twist at the end is less of a surprise to us a century on is that so many authors have followed the trend that Christie set. A lovely way to begin the National Year of Reading.