India, Sept. 15 -- "Mrs Ferrars died on the night of the 16th-17th September - a Thursday."

The opening line of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd isn't dramatic. It is precise and factual. But when Agatha Christie wrote it in 1926, she was beginning a novel that would permanently change what readers thought a detective story was allowed to do.

A century later, it remains one of the landmarks of crime fiction - not because of its solution, but because of the argument that solution started about how a mystery should be told.

The setting is familiar. In the peaceful English village of King's Abbot, wealthy industrialist Roger Ackroyd is found murdered in his study. Ackroyd has recently learned that his fiancee, Mrs Ferrars, killed her abusive h...