The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie
I've been finding it difficult to gather the time and attention to read for the past few weeks and I thought I'd try something a bit lighter to try and get those pages turning for me again. It has been anything up to thirty years since I read any Agatha Christie but I did read a large number of her books in my early adolescence. I may or may not have read this one, at times it seemed familiar but familiarity is one of the reasons to read Christie.
Indeed I found myself reminded of other books from my childhood that I've recently been reading for my ten year old and that I probably read at around the time I was reading books by Christie - Enid Blyton, The Hardy Boys etc. Christie is far more sophisticated than these but there are many structural similarities. It moves swiftly from set up to denouement with the minimum of excess writing. At its heart is an England of leafy lanes and villages, upstairs and downstairs, gardeners and parlour-maids, with the addition of intrigue and murder most foul.
