THE POETICS OF NARRATIVE UNRELIABILITY AND READER MISDIRECTION IN THE WORKS OF AGATHA CHRISTIE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/Keywords:
narrative unreliability, detective fiction, Agatha Christie, red herring, focalization, episteme, narrator, false clue, literary deception, genre subversion.Abstract
This article provides a comprehensive analysis of narrative unreliability and the poetics of reader misdirection in the works of Agatha Christie (1890–1976), the celebrated British detective fiction writer. Drawing on Aristotle’s theory of mimesis, Wayne C. Booth’s concept of the unreliable narrator, and Gérard Genette’s narratology as theoretical frameworks, the study examines four major Christie novels — The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), And Then There Were None (1939), Murder on the Orient Express (1934), and Crooked House (1949). The article identifies and analyses key narrative mechanisms including the red herring technique, selective silence, unreliable focalization, and metatextual deception. Christie’s strategy of subverting genre conventions is further assessed from a literary-philosophical perspective. The conclusion argues that narrative unreliability in Christie’s fiction functions not merely as a genre device, but as an epistemological challenge that interrogates the very nature of truth and the limits of human cognition.
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