A substantial, quotation-rich teaching PowerPoint exploring Agatha Christie’s narrative methods in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Designed primarily for A-Level English Literature students studying crime writing, the resource moves beyond plot and character to examine precisely how Christie constructs one of detective fiction’s most famous deceptions.

The presentation offers detailed close reading of key passages, including the “blank ten minutes”, Sheppard’s claim that he “did what little had to be done”, Poirot’s description of his “becomingly reticent” narration, and the imagined row of asterisks discussed in the “Apologia”.

Topics include:

• unreliable narration and narratorial underreporting
• truthful statements, strategic omissions and verbal evasion
• Sheppard’s use of euphemism, vague pronouns and grammatical concealment
• the manipulation of chronology and narrative transitions
• the trusted Watson/Hastings narrator convention
• chapter titles as instruments of misdirection
• the Tunisian dagger as a decoy clue
• diagrams, maps and the rhetoric of detective-fiction “fair play”
• reader complicity, genre expectations and retrospective rereading
• Sheppard as criminal, narrator, editor and critic of his own manuscript

The deck includes extended word-level analysis, academic critical perspectives, discussion questions, retrieval activities, an AO2 close-reading exercise, an analytical paragraph scaffold, a mini-essay task, an exit ticket and a full works-cited slide.

Academic material draws on scholarship relating to pragma-stylistics, narratology, unreliable narration, reader response and the conventions of Golden Age detective fiction. The presentation is designed to help students develop precise, method-led arguments rather than relying on plot summary or generalised comments about suspense.

Please note: the resource contains full spoilers for the novel.

Ideal for:

• AQA A-Level English Literature B: Elements of Crime Writing
• whole-class teaching and revision
• essay planning and analytical writing
• teacher-led close reading
• independent study and consolidation