The Act of Roger Murgatroyd

Blurb

The Act of Roger Murgatroyd: An Entertainment is a whodunit by Gilbert Adair first published in 2006. Set in the 1930s and written in the vein of an Agatha Christie novel, it has all the classic ingredients of a 1930s mystery and is, according to the author, "at one and the same time, a celebration, a parody and a critique not only of Agatha Christie but of the whole Golden Age of English whodunits", but also "a whodunit in its own right, so that those readers who were completely uninterested in literary games of the so-called postmodern type could nevertheless settle down comfortably with a good, gripping and intentionally old-fashioned thriller". The Act of Roger Murgatroyd is also a locked room mystery.
The title alludes to two of Agatha Christie's works: her breakthrough novel, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and a character from a later tale, A Murder is Announced. There are many more references to prominent crime writers and their works, including, tongue-in-cheek, an anachronistic allusion to critic Edmund Wilson's 1945 essay, "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?".