Agatha Christie 'The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd

This is the blurb from one of Christie’s most famous murder novels ‘The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd’.

Roger Ackroyd was a man

       who knew too much.

He knew the woman he loved

Had poisoned her first husband. He knew

Someone was blackmailing her- and

Now he knew she had taken her own

Life with a drug overdose.

Soon the evening post would let him

Know who the mystery blackmailer was.

But Ackroyd was dead before he’d finished

Reading it- stabbed through the neck

Where he sat in his study…

The blurb uses many pronouns ‘he’ and ‘her’ to hide their identities and make a sense of mystery and secrecy. The line ‘Who knew too much’ is indented which makes you focus on it because it sticks out and you know that something bad will happen to him. ‘Knew’ is repeated three times in the first paragraph and makes you want to know exactly what it is that he knows and nobody else does.

There are negative words throughout the blurb: ‘poisoned’and ‘stabbed’ which are acts of violence so you know there is going to be lots of plots and murders. The harsh ‘B’ sound and the ‘P’ sound give a nasty and harsh tone to the writing. The sibilant sound in the last two lines ‘stabbed through the neck where he sat in his study…’ makes you think of something sinister or evil. The blurb ends with an ellipsis, which encourages you to follow the story in the book. GOOD TECHNIQUES TO BORROW FOR OUR WORK = use of pronouns instead of names/repetition/sounds/ellipsis and structure (i.e indentation).

Alex Eburne