How Narrators are Utilized by Detective Fiction Authors

Literary Analysis- Spring 2025

It has been shown that assuming a suspect is guilty impacts the way investigators will view the evidence in a biased way and that means they are more likely to pick and choose evidence (Meterko & Cooper, 2021). In detective fiction, the audience is heavily involved in the investigation of a crime. However, the way evidence is presented to the audience impacts the way they interpret that evidence. Much like in a real criminal case, the audience falls prey to the same cognitive biases they would in real life when they are investigating the crimes with the fictional detectives. “Murders in the Rue Morgue”, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and Magpie Murders all utilize different narrators in different ways to accomplish a goal. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is told from the murderer’s point of view and seeks to deceive the reader. “Murders in the Rue Morgue” is told from the sidekick’s perspective and seeks to make the reader admire the detective, Dupin. Magpie Murders is told from the detective’s perspective and seeks to make the audience relate to the detective.  The way the narrators are utilized in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Magpie Murders, and “Murders in the Rue Morgue” impacts how the audience views the characters and evidence in these narratives. 

“Murders in the Rue Morgue” is written from the sidekick’s point of view which paints the detective in a positive way while disconnecting us from their thoughts and emotions. The unnamed narrator of Poe’s (1841) short story holds August Dupin in a very high regard. After Dupin explains how he knew what the narrator was thinking he says this: 

I will not say that I was surprised. I was more than surprised; I was astonished. Dupin was right, as right as he could be. Those were in fact my thoughts, my unspoken thoughts, as my mind moved from one thought to the next. But if I was astonished by this, I would soon be more than astonished. (Poe, 1841, p. 41). 

The narrator of this story is biased towards Dupin. He frequently tells us that Dupin has extraordinary deduction powers that he was able to, “...look right through a man’s body into his deepest soul” (Poe, 1841, p. 47). Having a narrator that holds the detective in such a high regard succeeds in making the audience trust their deduction skills. However, the sidekick being the narrator separates the audience from the detective’s thought process. When Poe (1841) wants the audience to understand Dupin’s thought process he has to use long strings of dialogue which he relies on heavily when Dupin is solving the murder (p. 52). Using the sidekick as a narrator means the author is slightly limited when it comes to how they present a detective’s deduction. Information can easily be kept from the audience which is similar to the way Agatha Christie used Dr Sheppard. 

In The Murder of Roger Ackroyd the story is told from the murder’s point of view which clouds the audience’s judgement. Dr Sheppard is the town’s doctor who takes care of all the people who live there. We are introduced to him and his duties in the first chapter after he comes home from pronouncing Mrs. Ferrars dead. He leaves Roger Ackroyd's office where we get our first clues that he is an unreliable narrator. As he's leaving, he states, “I hesitated with my hand on the door handle, looking back and wondering if there was anything I had left undone” (Christie, 1926, p. 403). This should be a red flag in the reader's mind immediately. However, the reader has been conditioned to trust the narrator. Dr Sheppard shows other signs of being an unreliable narrator. One of these comes right at the beginning of the book, when he claims that Roger Ackroyd is upset about when he gets incredibly defensive with Caroline immediately as she is theorizing about the death of Mrs. Ferrars (Christie, 1926, p. 68). Later the audience finds out that Sheppard was Mrs. Ferrars’ blackmailer. So it makes sense why he lashes out at her here. He does not want her to figure it out. Another moment where it is hinted that he is unreliable is when he presents the audience conflicting information. When Sheppard introduces Ralph and Flora’s engagement he introduces it in a conversation he had with Caroline where she claims it is a secret engagement that Ackyroyd isn’t fond of (Christie, 1926, p. 229). Later Flora claims the exact opposite saying, “Uncle is very pleased. It keeps me in the family, you see” (Christie, 1926, p. 440). Here Sheppard is subtly manipulating the audience’s view on the characters of the story. Having this contradicting evidence makes the audience question both of these characters. If they believed Caroline it puts Flora on the suspect list immediately. However, if they believe Flora then this makes the audience believe that maybe Caroline is not as smart as she seems. He is using the audience’s own cognitive biases against them. Oftentimes, our preexisting beliefs cloud our judgement and make it difficult to interpret evidence (Meterko & Cooper, 2021). He takes advantage of this to manipulate the audience and steer any suspicion away from him. Dr Sheppard also tends to be more suspicious and withdrawn from the detective, Poirot. He even questions him when he says, “It crossed my mind to wonder whether he was really any good as a detective. Had his big reputation been built up on a series of lucky chances?” (Christie, 1926, p. 1236). Dr Sheppard is attempting to convince the audience not to trust Poirot. Previously, in Poe’s (1841) short story “Murders in the Rue Morgue”, it has been established that narrators are reliable, and the audience should trust them. Narrators are tools to divulge information and establish trust in the detective. However, Dr Shepherd was not used as a tool to divulge information. He was used as a tool to manipulate the audience and keep the truth hidden from them until Poirot reveals that Dr Sheppard is the murderer (Christie, 1926, p. 3765). This is incredibly significant because it shows how the genre has developed. Author’s are becoming more creative with how they decide to use narrators. Susan, the narrator of Anthony Horowititz’s (2016) novel is one example of this. 

The framing narrative in Magpie Murders is told from the detective's point of view which allows the audience to see the inner thoughts of the detective allowing the audience to see her thought process. In Magpie Murders there's a story within a story, and Susan is the detective of the framing story. Susan is an untraditional detective because she is actually a book editor (Horowitz, 2016, p. 220). Seeing her perspective is incredibly interesting because she acts very differently from the other detectives. What she does is she acts as almost a reader, not a detective. This first becomes evident when Susan tells the audience she loves detective fiction, “I never guess the ending and I can’t wait for the moment when the detective gathers all the suspects in the room and…makes the whole thing make sense” (Horowitz, 2016, p. 233). She starts solving the murder of Alan Conway because she has an emotional attachment to the book that was left unfinished.  Poe’s (1841) and Christie’s (1926) stories have a disconnect between the audience and detective while Magpie Murders does not have this. Information has previously been filtered through a sidekick or the murderer. Horowitz (2016) instead decides to filter the information through the detective. Susan being an inexperienced detective also impacted the way she looked at evidence and subsequently the way the audience looked at evidence. Susan did not originally find Alan’s suicide letter suspicious. After she finds out it wasn’t written by him she says, “I knew there was something strange about Alan’s suicide letter, but I didn’t see what it was” (Horowitz, 2016, p. 425). The audience also looks over his letter because we have been conditioned to trust the detective to notice these details. She also does not consider Charles to be a suspect at first (Horowitz, 2016, p. 288). Her lack of experience means the audience does not have the same access to evidence that they had in Poe’s (1841) short story. However, Susan is one of the most relatable detectives in these stories. Her love for literature and lack of experience makes it so she does not need a narrator telling the audience how amazing she is.Susan is a relatable character unlike Dupin or Dr Sheppard. She brings the audience a little closer to the narrative. 

The way the audience sees characters and evidence in Magpie Murders, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and “Murders in the Rue Morgue” is impacted by the narrator of the story. The narrator of Poe’s (1841) short story encourages the audience to place faith in Dupin. Dr Sheppard is used to deceive the audience. Susan is used to pull the audience into the narrative through her relatability. These stories all use narrators in different ways to accomplish different things. When the audience is so heavily involved in investigating a crime it’s natural to assume that we would eventually become good at it. However, these Authors have used their narrators to conceal information, misinterpret evidence, and manipulate the audience in some way. Narrators like Dr Sheppard use our own cognitive biases against the audience to push them in the wrong direction. Horowitz (2016) uses the inexperienced, relatable detective to misinterpret evidence slightly. Which allows him to have a big reveal at the end. The narrator of “Murders in the Rue Morgue” acts as a tool to conceal information from the audience. This narrator does very little deducing on his own so the audience relies on him telling us what Dupin is saying. These fictional works reveal something interesting about the way audiences interact with narrators and detective fiction. Often, the reader of one of these works wants to be able to solve the mystery on their own. Poe (1841), Christie (1926), and Horowitz (2016) have all proven in some way that the audience has to rely on them. Unlike the detectives of these novels the reader cannot interact with the evidence. They can look and theorize but they still have the information filtered through another source. Regardless of whether or not the source is reliable this means any attempt at solving the mystery will be flawed. We are limited by our lack of experience, cognitive biases, and access to information.

References

Christie, A. (1926). The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. [Kindle Edition] St. Martin’s Press. 

Horowitz, A. (2016). Magpie Murders. [Kindle Edition]

Poe, E. (1841). The Murders in the Rue Morgue. (pp. 38-63). 

Meterko, V., Cooper, G. Cognitive Biases in Criminal Case Evaluation: A Review of the Research. J Police Crim Psych 37, 101–122 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-020-09425-8