Reading the Criminal Mind: Psychological Inference in Poe’s The Purloined Letter and Christie’s the Murder of Roger Ackroyd

This research examines how criminal intention is concealed and subsequently reconstructed in Edgar Allan Poe’s
The Purloined Letter (1844) and Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926). Although the texts
concern different offences, both give considerable importance to the offender’s ability to anticipate how others
will interpret available evidence. Psychological inference consequently emerges as a struggle between
competing interpretations, shaped by the criminal’s calculated use of expectations and the detective’s willingness
to question apparently credible explanations.
In Poe’s story, the thief’s identity is already known; the difficulty lies in understanding the method of
concealment. Dupin’s discussion of a schoolboy’s guessing game establishes the significance of imaginative
identification with an opponent’s reasoning. The police search remains unsuccessful because its thoroughness
operates within familiar assumptions about hiding. Christie relocates this difficulty within the narration itself.
Dr Sheppard’s professional standing, selective disclosures and carefully phrased account establish credibility
while concealing criminal involvement. Poirot’s investigation exposes discrepancies between the narrated
account, material circumstances and observed behaviour, demonstrating how accurate details can coexist with
deliberate deception.
Through comparative close reading, informed by Wayne C. Booth’s discussion of unreliable narration in The
Rhetoric of Fiction, the paper explores the relationship between criminal calculation, narrative authority and
readerly trust. Particular attention is given to the distinction between Poe’s retrospective explanation of Dupin’s
reasoning and Christie’s placement of the reader within an account controlled by the offender. The comparison
suggests that concealment succeeds through the manipulation of interpretive habits as much as through the
withholding of evidence. Reading the criminal mind, therefore, involves tracing how believable appearances are
constructed and how psychological inference makes those appearances open to question.

Criminal Psychology, Psychological Inference, Detective Fiction, Criminal Intention, Concealment, Unreliable Narration, Readerly Trust

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