WILLIAM ROSE BENÉT

"The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" really turns a new trick in detective fiction, surely a difficult enough achievement "with the competition so strong." Most writers of detective stories develop their own special detectives, following the lead of the famous. Agatha Christie's pet detective is Hercule Poirot….

Poirot is merely one factor in a tale so ingeniously constructed, so dextrously plotted as to warrant our complete admiration. It is unfortunate for us that we may not indicate here the most original element in Miss Christie's planning of the story. But that would be treachery to the author, and the reader has no right to be too well informed in advance….

Suffice it to say that Miss Christie's dedication of the book is to one "who likes an orthodox detective story, murder, inquest, and suspicion falling on every one in turn!" So she set herself to write such an orthodox story, with the strange result that she has succeeded in producing one of the few notable for originality.

For those who prefer certain backgrounds to others for their mystery tales we may say that Miss Christie's are always English in setting. To those who hate "loose ends" we may remark that this author ties all her knots neatly and bites off the thread. Her characterization is sharp in outline, her motivation is sound, complications of the plot never "get away from her." Everything in the puzzle falls neatly into place, and the complete picture leaves upon us an ineradicable impression. There are no inexplicable and glozed-over details. It is all an almost mathematical demonstration so far as the fundamental brainwork goes. Yet that it is no mere clever intellectual exercise, witness the fact that the reader is left with the strongest emotions of pity and wonder over the disastrous coil the weak and erring weave. There are indications, in fact, of an even deeper psychological insight than can be actively exercised in a book of this kind. For a detective story must move. The author cannot pause to philosophize. But one is rather closer in touch, in this tale, with the mad logic of actual criminality, with the criminal as a mainly average human being with one tragic twist, than is at all usual.

We do not overpraise this story, we believe, when we say that it should go on the shelf with the books of first rank in its field. The detective story pure and simple has as definite limitations of form as the sonnet in poetry. Within these limitations, with admirable structural art, Miss Christie has genuinely achieved.

[The Mysterious Affair at Styles] is a well-knit tale, which advances steadily to plausible conclusion without attempting the mystification of the reader by the introduction of unnecessary detail and false clues. Yet at one time or another suspicion is thrown on all the leading characters, and thrown on them with sufficient naturalness to be justified even after the story has reached its conclusion. Miss Christie writes with economy of incident, and the stereotyped properties of the usual detective of fiction. (p. 600)

The Saturday Review of Literature (copyright, 1927., by The Saturday Review Co., Inc.; reprinted with permission), February 19, 1927.

To describe adequately such a book as ["Partners in Crime"] is no easy matter. It is a group of short detective stories within a detective novel, for there is a rather sketchy, but nonetheless absorbing, plot which holds the separate tales together. The entire book and the separate stories may be taken as hilarious burlesque or parodies of current detective fiction, or they may be taken as serious attempts on the part of the author to write stories in the manner of some of the masters of the art. Taken either way, they are distinctly worth while…. Thomas Beresford and his wife, known to their friends as Tommy and Tuppence, are requested by Tommy's chief in the Foreign Office to take charge of a private detective agency whose owner has been arrested for certain activities without the law…. Both are omnivorous readers of detective fiction, and they decide to try out, one after the other, the methods of Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown, Inspector French and other fiction heroes, including Agatha Christie's own Hercule Poirot. The result is the merriest collection of detective stories it has been our good fortune to encounter. (p. 38)

The New York Times Book Review (© 1929 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission), September 22, 1929.