Customer Reviews

Towards Zero: A BBC Full-Cast Radio Drama

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This 1944 mystery begins with a group of criminologists discussing murder cases, one remarks that murder mysteries are written backwards, beginning with the crime when in fact, the real story begins much earlier.

The action then shifts to other characters as the countdown to zero hour begins. The diverse group includes a would be suicide; an athletic young man and his current and former wives; a planter from the Far East; and a wealthy invalid and her impoverished companion. We see these characters and others take the steps that ultimately lead then to an isolated seacoast estate and murder.

This is a Sgt. Battle mystery (The Seven Dials) and we are treated to some background information on him. Poirot is mentioned but only in passing. Christie, speaking through Battle, makes clear her feelings about the then current fad of psychology and those who attempt to apply it while only half understanding the theories.

The 60 year old story has worn well overall. A 21st century reader would be puzzled only by the stigma that some of the characters applied to divorce and the relatively unsophisicated forensic proceedures. This is, as is typical of Christie's work, well plotted, the clues are all there for the reader to follow through the maze of red herrings but nearly impossible to solve before the detective.

The first half of this book is slow-paced and rather boring. But please be patient and don't throw the book away. It is just marvelous how black turns to white and white turns to black at the ending.

I don't know how her story would be if she is alive in this technological world. Story starrts slowly but each every charector has an role in the end. U may feel that some stories
about Mr Battle and a man who tried suicide boring in the begginning.But keep on going and u will never turn it down.

Dame Agatha explains the reason why each charector came to that house.An extremely well planned murder,of course,main objective of the murderer is different from what he/she did. Surely a must read novel for mystery novels.

Towards Zero was a great book. The characters and story seemed realistic. While reading it I just didn't want to put it down. It kept me thiking from the part that Mr. Treves died until the end. I also have read Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" which was not as realistic as "Towards Zero." But there is something that may make you put down the book, the begining. It was downright boring. The author just keeps on talking about the characters' lives. But towards the middle things started to heat up and it got real interesting.

This has to be one of Agatha Christie's best ever books. There are a lot of them, yes (Around 15!) but i would suggest that this taut thriller is probably within the top five.

The characters are very well drawn. Realistic and believeable. The story is tense, not too overdramatic, and suspenseful. The story begins brilliantly (rather like the beginning of And Then there Were None) with all the characters seperately going about their own thing, slowly unfolding the reasons why they come to be at Gull's Point over this fateful weekend. It opens with esteemed lawyers discussing criminal trials...then moves to a murder carefully planning out the deed...onto newlywedded famous tennis player with his new wife Kay...to the attempted suicide of man by driving himself over a cliff. (A man to return to Gull's Point in the future to see the place where he almost died, only to become an important factor in a murder investigation that will change his life...and so on.

The setting is good. The plot is different from some of her other stuff. (Something all her best books have in common, an element of extreme originality in solution, plot, setting, or character.)

This is actually a brilliant thriller. The atmosphere is fear-filled, and the solution brilliant. She double-trumps the reader's expectations and assumptions once again, in an incredibly fine detective novel.

At the prologue, veteran lawyer Mr Treves remarked that investigations at a murder oft looked at the murder as the starting point when oft murder was the end and that the real story began long before.

And so Agatha Christie introduced many disparate threads in the beginning that appeared to have absolutely no relationship whatsoever with each other - Inspector Battle's daughter getting into trouble in school, a failed suicide of a man let down by the world when all he did was to be honest, a young man getting his wife and ex-wife down to his adopted country seat home at Gull's Point.

The deaths did not come in until about half the book, the first person to make the exit being Mr Treve himself. Next was the elderly widow Lady Tressilian, matron of Gull's Point.

Rounding up the usual suspects, we have Neville Strange, young, rich, semi-pro sportsman; his second wife Kay, a glamorous hothead from the Riviera; his divorced first wife Audrey, a complete contrast in character to Kay, stately, willowy and dignified; Thomas Royde, family friend on home visit from Malaya, devoted to Audrey for years; Edward Latimer, friend to and similarly devoted to Kay; Mary Adlin, Lady Tressilian's companion and manager of the household; plus an assortment of domestic help.

Did Kay kill Lady Tresslian, thinking she would be the beneficiary to the legacy as wife of Neville Strange? Especially when Neville declared he intended to divorce her to get Audrey back.

Was Audrey the culprit, knowing she was the actual beneficiacry, being the wife of Neville when the will was drawn up, mentioned in name specifically?

Or was it Neville, to thwart Lady Tresillian's objections to his divorcing Kay to get Audrey? Much as Lady Tresillian disliked his first divorce and his second wife and as much as she liked Audrey, she disapproved of his irresponsible behaviour.

Or perhaps it was Edward, confidante to Kay, who thought of doing her a favour by securing her an inheritance.

Or even Mary, who could be a repressed woman.

Slowly, possible motives and opportunities emerged for the suspects. Inspector Battle who had to cut short his trip found himself applying the lessons he learned from his daughter and from Hercule Poirot to detect the fiendishly cunning traps set by the murderer.

It was one of the more difficult puzzles created by Christie. While readers may be justified in feeling upset when characters narration were purposely withheld from them, enough clues and hints and omens were given in the book to point them to the culprit.

It would take a patient and careful reader to pick up all the clues and be able to see the final light when the last piece of the puzzle was revealed.

No mystery writer living or dead can surpass Dame Agatha Chrstie's skill, eye-for-detail and magnanamous scope and appetitie for mystery. She weaves a juicy thriller like no other. Simple people get involved as in this book - where there is no Poirot, no Marple, no Tommy and Tuppence - just a bunch of people gathered at Salt Creek and then a murder occurs - in fact two...This is where the action starts or rather as the book says: Towards Zero is just the time of the murder. The murder has been planned way in advance. As usual, the plot moves at a rapid pace with lots of twists and turns and suggestive clues dropped here and there. Whodunit!! No one knows till the end!

Towards Zero is a great mystery to be cherished on a rainy afternoon with a cup of hot chocolate...Dame Christie does it again for me!!

Call me dumb, but this is my all-time sentimental favorite that left me gaping the 1st time I read it (waaay back when I was still in mini-skirts & pony-tails). Years - and dozens of Christie - later, it still stands high as the most amazing murder web ever-penned. A touch of romance here & there doesn't hurt either. A stunner woven with magnetic story-telling, glittering characters & a sensational, mind-shattering ending. Pure EVIL !

"Towards Zero," one of Christie's lesser-known works, is a stunner nonetheless. The plot is not constructed in her usual pattern; the murder comes rather late, and Christie's penchant for misdirection is perhaps at its best here. The story begins by pointing in one direction, then reverses itself and points in quite a different direction. The preliminary chapters are also unusual; they set the reader up for several surprises that come at the very end. Read this one carefully!

This book's plot I found rather boring and unremarkable