Roger Ackroyd
Created by Jules Feiffer

New York cartoonist Jules Feiffer's Ackroyd is a rather strange book, taking the form of the diary of one ROGER ACKROYD (a tip of the hat to Agatha Christie's classic Murder of Roger Ackroyd), a neurotic young P.I. who becomes obsessed with one of his very first clients, Oscar Plante, a newspaper columnist.

The book, subtitled "A Mystery of Identity," covers several years of Roger's (and Oscar's) life.

It drew wide praise at the time, although I found the humour occasionally uneven, with long, pointless and even just plain dumb stretches. There are some good lines in this one, and the plot is certainly original enough (at times reminiscent of Marc Behn's The Eye), but this satire isn't so much biting, as gnawing.

Still, if you want something peculiar...

UNDER OATH

• "Sneaky and brilliant."
  (The San Francisco Examiner)
  
  
• "Wildly funny...flawless dialogue"
  (Newsweek)

NOVELS

• Ackroyd (1977) . Buy this book

Report submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.