He solved the case of the missing parakeets. Now if only he could figure out who he was...

He took a dead man's name, a private eye's office, and a client's identity. Roger Ackroyd was the name. Twenty-five-dollars-a-day-plus-expenses was the game. After he cracked the bird caper, he was hired by Oscar Plante, the Walter Lippman of sports columnists, to investigate a case of writer's block.

Plunged deeper and deeper into the famed author's tangled affairs, his personality began to merge with his client's. And somewhere between Elaine's and Saratoga Springs, Ackroyd acquired Plante's ex-wife, his mistress, and his craft.