A quiet English village becomes the scene of a complex, baffling murder. And it would require all the subtle intelligence of Hercule Poirot to pin down the killer.

One of the few Hercule Poirot mysteries not written from the point of view of Colonel Hastings or a third-person point of view. The book is written from the point of view of a doctor in the village.

The book starts with a suicide of a woman over the murder of her husband she committed a year earlier; later, Roger Ackroyd, the woman's intended fiance, is murdered. Who has been blackmailing her over her old sin? Was this the person who had murdered Ackroyd, or was it one of his heirs?