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Mechanical brains may object that the murderer “perfects” his mystery by methods already imposed upon fiction’s police, but even when the maze is vaguely recognised the tale still grips.
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By virtue of masterly story-telling it makes the welfare of certain persons at a seaside town seem of more importance at the moment than anything else in the world. If this argument is sound then Towards Zero is for the critical. Times Literary Supplement (Maurice Willson Disher, 22 nd July 1944): Undiscriminating admirers of Miss Christie must surely miss the thrill of realising when she is at her best. What then happens brings about the conclusion of the most amazing detective story of Agatha Christie’s many excellent mysteries. No one seemed to have had any reason for killing her, nor did anyone gain by her death. There had apparently been no premeditation on the part of her family and friends who had gathered at her home for their regular yearly visit. There had been a murder – a brutal murder of an invalid matriarch as she lay in bed. It’s Zero Hour.”įive puzzled faces turned to him. The murder itself is the end of the story. A murder is the culmination of a lot of different circumstances, all converging at a given time at a given point. The murder begins a long time beforehand. Towards Zero is atmospheric, very cleverly plotted, and although it’s not one of my favourite Agatha Christie novels it’s still one that I would highly recommend.“When you read the account of a murder, real or imagined, you usually begin with the murder itself,” said big Inspector Battle. Looking back, there were plenty of clues, but plenty of red herrings too. I thought the mystery was a difficult one to solve and I think I suspected all of the above people at some point in the story! I thought I’d figured it out once or twice but was proved wrong and there were at least two big plot twists towards the end of the book that took me by surprise. And what about Mary Aldin, Lady Tressilian’s companion? Could the murderer be the tennis player, Nevile Strange, one of Lady Tressilian’s guests? Or his beautiful wife, Kay? Or could it be his first wife, Audrey, who happens to be visiting at the same time? Maybe it’s Thomas Royde, who is secretly in love with Audrey – or Ted Latimer, a friend of Kay’s.
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So by the time the murder takes place halfway through the book, the characters are quite well-developed and we know a lot about each of the possible suspects. The story begins long before that – years before sometimes – with all the causes and events that bring certain people to a certain place at a certain time on a certain day.” “But, you know, they begin in the wrong place! They begin with the murder. “I like a good detective story,” he said. Instead of beginning with a murder and then following the detective’s attempts to solve it, she chooses to spend half the book describing the backgrounds of the characters, some seemingly unconnected episodes from their pasts, and the sequence of events that lead to the murder finally being committed and the murderer’s objective being achieved (what one of the characters refers to as ‘Zero Hour’). With this novel, Christie takes a slightly different approach to normal. The story revolves around the murder of an elderly woman, Lady Tressilian, who has invited a group of guests to her seaside home at Gull’s Point.
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There’s no Poirot or Miss Marple in this one (although there is a TV adaptation – which I haven’t seen – where Miss Marple does appear) but even without them I thought this was an excellent murder mystery novel that deserves to be more popular. Towards Zero is one of only a few Agatha Christie novels to feature the detective Superintendent Battle.