Help a fading memory

[ed goldberg]

Hi All,
Someone asked me whether I knew of a book where a detective investigates a crime and realizes that he, himself, committed the murder. My friend believed it might have been a French novel or story.
This sounds familiar to me, but my aging gray matter has failed to resolve this.
Any ideas?
Thanks.

[J. F. Juzwik]

Hercule Poirot's Christmas is one story that has the investigating officer as the killer. Joyce

[ed goldberg]

Thanks!

[D.R. MacMaster]

There was another Poirot novel, I think it might be Murder of Roger Ackroyd where the narrator turns out to be the killer.

[I. J. Parker]

I thought of that also. Have a dim memory that in spite of popular opinion regarding this "brilliant twist", I was not pleased as a reader.

[ed goldberg]

As David St. Hubbins said in Spinal Tap, It's such a fine line between stupid and clever.

[ed goldberg]

Thanks for getting back to me.

[Graham Powell]

There's also a short story by John Lutz called "The Real Shape of the Coast" about a murder in an insane asylum.

[ed goldberg]

Many thanks.

[Laura Benedict]

You should definitely read Patry Francis's first novel The Liar's Diary. The protagonist is not an investigator, but is an excellent example of a well-written unreliable narrator.

[ed goldberg]

Thank you!

[Suzanne]

In Anne Perry's "Face of a Stranger." the police detective has amnesia and comes to believe that he is the murderer.

[Toni Osborne]

Ed maybe this will be an other novel that would answer your question

" In the Woods" by Tana French is a story of a detective in the Dublin that is drawn back into a past mystery when the body of a young girl is found at the site of an old tragedy. By the end of the book the detective realizes( so does the reader) that the 20 year old murder was committed by him when he was a boy.

Toni