Rating: 
Summary: Bayard doesn't have a clue
Review: The idea of a story entering the public domain and giving rise to a variety of interpretations and even, in the case of a mystery novel, to a new ending, is an interesting one. What a pity that Bayard lacks the analytical and writing skills to make a go of it. There is much wrong with this book, but I would like just to point out one glaring error. Bayard's 'solution' depends on Roger Ackroyd admitting the murderer through the french windows in his study. Unfortunately, there were no french windows in the study; they were in the drawing room. The study had sash windows. Although this invalidates Bayard's entire thesis, it is among the least of the problems with this book. The real mystery (more puzzling than anything Ms Christie could have dreamed up) is how this book got published in the first place.
Rating: 
Summary: Relax! Bayard affirms the greatness of Agatha Christie.
Review: This book could never have been written by an Anglophone critic, who would treat the French reverence of Agatha Christie with the same bemused condescension as its apotheosis of Jerry Lewis (when Bayard lists the major writers who have discussed 'Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?' (Barthes, Eco, Robbe-Grillet, Perec et al), English-speaking writers are predictably absent). Coming from such an Anglophone culture as I do, it is startling to find Christie discussed not as a slick purveyor of narrow puzzles, but as a great writer of works of art, to be analysed with the same respect as Tolstoy and Flaubert. Bayard can make such claims because of his method - by focusing rigorously on the body of work, the texts and their techniques, and dismissing the irrelevant claims of biography, class, gender, history, context etc., he ironically opens them up, reveals their formal daring, their, their philosophical depth, their proto-post-modernist concern with the reader, the author and the stability of the text. In a comment on Durrenmatt's 'The Pledge' recently, I sarcastically referred to Christie as a modernist; after Bayard's book I stand disgraced.so although this book's novelty and selling point is the idea that Christie got it wrong, that the solution to her most ingenious and controversial novel doesn't make much sense, it is really a celebration of how Christie got it innovatively right for decades, an achievement that went unnoticed because, as a writer of puzzles, she didn't produce the kind of books that get reread, unlike those of Flaubert and Tolstoy. so Bayard's book is also a celebration of the detective genre, a theoretical analysis of its structures of meaning, showing how they actually undermine their ostensible purpose, the restoration of order and clarity (e.g. the narration of any detective story is always an instance of bad faith, constructing false worlds in order to trick the reader). The book is also a case for revivifying the waning practice of (specifically Freudian) psychoanalysis, especially in reading literary works - after all, the work of psychoanalysts and detectives, uncovering events in the past by an examination and interpretation of clues or signifcant events, are very similar (ditto literary critics). Most ambitiously, it is a book about the acts of writing and reading - in a performance of Barthesian magnanimity, Bayard shows how Christie destroys the structures and assumptions of conventional narration, thereby liberating the imaginative and interpretive powers of the reader willing to take up the challenge. In finding links between detective work, theory construction and clinical delusion, Bayard endearingly begins chasing his own tail, and the book will be invaluable to readers of Raymond Queneau. But, most pressingly, the book remains true to its promise - the self-sufficient theoretical analyses (largely readable, although I made heavy weather of the 'delusion' section) are firmly in the service of the book's mystery - who, then, really did kill Roger Ackroyd? - which in itself is constructed like an Agatha Christie-style mystery, with clues followed up, discarded or co-opted before a final, Poirot-like flourish, which is immensely satisfying, both at the level of the crime genre and the original novel, and and on that of open-ended, philosophical speculation. It'll make you rush to Christie's books with renewed awe.
Rating: 
Summary: An alternative ending - just as shocking
Review: This is a complex book about an already psychologically complex novel that offers a new possibility for its ending. I would characterize this new proposed ending as shocking not just for who it proposes as the new murderer but because of the startling revelation it makes about the nature of Hercule Poirot and his friend Hastings. The book bases itself on the psychological nature of the detective thriller and is, viewed in this light, an interesting new perspective.
Rating: 
Summary: Agatha Christie Would Role Over In Her Grave
Review: Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? was for me a disapointment. Offering an alternative solution to Agatha Christie's classic The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd, the book suggests that an entirely different person is responsible for the murder. I prefer the author's original murderer. After all, she wrote the book. No one else. I can only think that Agatha Christie would have been shocked to find someone else write a book about her book saying that the killer was not the person Agatha wrote as the killer. But maybe I'm wrong. I can see the book as an excellent source for a psychoanalyst and those interested in this field of research. Oddly, I was not surprised by the ending. From the very moment in the prologue, when the suggestion was made that the killer Agatha Christie wrote as the killer was not the killer, I knew where it was headed. And I was right. Normally I am not. But I could see where this was going. As a Agatha Christie fan I didn't really care for it. But as someone interested in psycology, it was very well written. One thing to note is that it gives away the solutions of several of Agatha Christie's works. So, be aware of that before reading.
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