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''Towards Zero'' is a work of detective fiction by
Agatha Christie Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, (; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictiona ...
first published in the US by
Dodd, Mead and Company Dodd, Mead and Company was one of the pioneer publishing houses of the United States, based in New York City. Under several names, the firm operated from 1839 until 1990. History Origins In 1839, Moses Woodruff Dodd (1813–1899) and John S. Ta ...
in June 1944, and in the UK by the
Collins Crime Club Collins Crime Club was an imprint of British book publishers William Collins, Sons and ran from 6 May 1930 to April 1994. Throughout its 64 years the club issued a total of 2,012in "The Hooded Gunman -- An Illustrated History of Collins Crime ...
in July of the same year. The first US edition of the novel retailed at $2.00 and the UK edition at seven
shillings The shilling is a historical coin, and the name of a unit of modern currencies formerly used in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, other British Commonwealth countries and Ireland, where they were generally equivalent to 12 pence or ...
and sixpence (7/6). Lady Tressilian invites her ward for his annual visit at Gull's Point. He insists on bringing both his former wife and his present wife, though Lady Tressilian finds this awkward. Her old friend Treves dies, then she is murdered as well; Superintendent Battle and his nephew are called in. The book is the last to feature
Superintendent Battle Superintendent Battle is a fictional character created by Agatha Christie who appeared in five of her novels. Novels featuring Superintendent Battle He appears as a detective in the following novels: * ''The Secret of Chimneys'' (1925) * ''The ...
. The novel was well received at publication, noted for the well-developed characters. A later review called it superb as to the plot, noting also how well the novel depicted the gentlemanly behaviour expected at the main tennis tournament in 1944.


Plot summary

Lady Tressilian is now confined to her bed, but still invites guests to her seaside home at Gull's Point during the summer. Tennis star Nevile Strange, former ward of Lady Tressilian's deceased husband, incurs her displeasure when he proposes to bring both his new wife, Kay, and his former wife, Audrey, to visit at the same time – a change from past years. Lady Tressilian grudgingly agrees to this set of incompatible guests. A long time family friend, Thomas Royde, home after a long stretch working overseas and still faithfully waiting on the sidelines for Audrey, is also a guest. Staying in hotels nearby are Kay’s friend, Ted Latimer, and Mr Treves, an elderly former solicitor and long time friend of the Tressilians. The house party feels uncomfortable, as Lady Tressilian had predicted. Invited to a dinner party, Mr Treves relates a story of an old case, where a child killed another with an arrow, which was ruled an accident, although a local man reported seeing the child practising with a bow and arrow. The child was given a new name and a fresh start. Mr Treves remembers the case and the child because of a distinctive physical feature which he does not reveal. The next morning, Treves is found dead in his hotel room and his death is attributed to heart failure from climbing up the stairs to his room the previous night, greatly upsetting Lady Tressilian. Thomas and Ted are mystified, as they saw a note stating that the lift was out of order when they walked Treves back. They learn from hotel staff that the lift was in working order that night. His death is ruled to be from natural causes. When Lady Tressilian is found brutally murdered in her bed, and her maid drugged a few days later, evidence points to Nevile Strange as the murderer as one of his golf clubs is found at the scene with his fingerprints on it. Her heirs are Nevile and Audrey. Nevile's quarrel with Lady Tressilian was also overheard. However when the maid wakes up, she tells Superintendent Battle that she saw Lady Tressilian alive after Nevile's visit to her room, before he left for Easterhead Bay to find Ted. The evidence then points to Audrey: a bloodied glove belonging to her is found in the ivy below her window together with the real murder weapon, fashioned from the handle of a tennis racket and the metal ball from the fireplace fender in Audrey’s room. Mary Aldin relates the story told by Mr Treves, and his claim that he could recognise that child with certainty; Battle is certain that the lift sign was placed in order to silence Mr Treves. Angus MacWhirter is standing at the cliff where, a year earlier, he had attempted suicide, when Audrey attempts to run off the same cliff. He grabs her before she can jump. She confesses her fear, and he promises that she will be safe. The local drycleaners inadvertently give MacWhirter an uncleaned jacket belonging to someone else. Though he is not one of the party at Gull’s House, he is aware of the progress of the investigation, well reported in the local newspapers. He realises why the jacket has stains in a certain odd pattern. He visits Gull’s Point, and requests Mary Aldin's help to find a rope in the house. They find a large damp rope in an otherwise dusty attic, and she locks the door until the police come. Battle arrests Audrey on the evidence and her ready admission of guilt. However, he suspects that Audrey is in a similar situation to that of his daughter when she had previously confessed under pressure to a theft she did not commit. MacWhirter meets Battle and tells him what he has learned about this case, including his observation of a man swimming across the creek on the night of the brutal murder, and climbing into the house on a rope. Then, Thomas reveals that Audrey had ended their marriage, not Nevile, as she had grown afraid of him. She had left Nevile and was about to marry Adrian Royde, Thomas's brother, when Adrian was killed in a road accident. With the parties on a motor launch, Battle uses this information to force a confession from Nevile Strange. He was the mastermind behind all the events and circumstances that should have converged into "zero" – the hanging of his first wife for the murder of Lady Tressilian. Nevile may have been behind two other deaths (Mr Treves and Adrian Royde) but there is insufficient evidence to prosecute. With his confession, the rope, and the ruse with the bell pull explained, Battle charges him with the murder of Lady Tressilian. Audrey seeks out MacWhirter to thank him, and they decide to marry. They will travel to Chile where he begins his new job. Audrey expects that Thomas will come to realize that he really wants to marry Mary Aldin instead.


Characters

* Camilla, Lady Tressilian: chatelaine of her seaside home at Saltcreek, Gull's Point; a widow in her early seventies. * Mary Aldin: Lady Tressilian's companion, in her mid-thirties. * Nevile Strange: a handsome athlete and tennis player, 33 years old, former ward of Lady Tressilian's late husband. (It is unaware if it’s intentional but when you remove the first and last letter of his first name, it spells “evil”, acknowledging his true identity) * Kay Strange: his beautiful, sometimes mercurial and hot-tempered, second wife, 23 years old. * Audrey Strange: Strange's first wife, age 32. So cool and quiet, it is almost impossible to know what she is thinking. (The polar opposite of Kay.) She was orphaned young, raised with her cousins and aunt, the Roydes. * Ted Latimer: a friend of Kay since they were in their mid-teens. * Thomas Royde: Audrey's cousin, on vacation from his work in Malaysia. Like Audrey, he is introverted and a person of few words. * Mr Treves: solicitor, an old friend of Lady Tressilian, about 80 years old. * Angus MacWhirter: man who attempted suicide from the cliff near Lady Tressilian's home, and survives to become a part of the solution to the crime. * Inspector James Leach: Battle's nephew, assigned to the Saltcreek area. *
Superintendent Battle Superintendent Battle is a fictional character created by Agatha Christie who appeared in five of her novels. Novels featuring Superintendent Battle He appears as a detective in the following novels: * ''The Secret of Chimneys'' (1925) * ''The ...
: Vacationing with his nephew, he is assigned to the case with him; husband and father of five children, the youngest of whom gives him an insight useful to solving this case.


Reception

The review by Maurice Willson Disher in ''
The Times Literary Supplement ''The Times Literary Supplement'' (''TLS'') is a weekly literary review published in London by News UK, a subsidiary of News Corp. History The ''TLS'' first appeared in 1902 as a supplement to ''The Times'' but became a separate publication i ...
'' of 22 July 1944 was overwhelmingly positive: "Undiscriminating admirers of Miss Christie must surely miss the thrill of realizing when she is at her best. If this argument is sound then ''Towards Zero'' is for the critical. 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. Mechanized brains may object that the murderer "perfects" his mystery by methods imposed upon fiction's police, but even when the maze is vaguely recognised the tale still grips. The characters become so much a part of the reader's existence that he must know what their ultimate fate may be before he will rest satisfied. How alive they are is apparent when two men, both dogged, laconic, poker-faced, never seem alike. The wife and the ex-wife, who neither like nor dislike one another, also reveal creative power. As an exhibition of the modern brand of human nature, ''Towards Zero'' deserves higher praises than any that can be awarded to it as an excellent detective story." Maurice Richardson in the 6 August 1944 issue of ''
The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...
'' wrote, "The new Agatha Christie has a deliciously prolonged and elaborate build-up, urbane and cosy like a good cigar and red leather slippers. Poirot is absent physically, but his influence guides the sensitive inspector past the wiles of the carefully planted house party, and with its tortuous double bluff this might well have been a Poirot case. How gratifying to see Agatha Christie keeping the flag of the old classic who-dun-it so triumphantly flying!"
Robert Barnard Robert Barnard (23 November 1936 – 19 September 2013) was an English crime writer, critic and lecturer. In addition to over 40 books published under his own name, he also published four books under the pseudonym Bernard Bastable. Life and work ...
: "Superb: intricately plotted and unusual. The murder comes later, and the real climax of the murderer's plot only at the end. The ingenuity excuses a degree of far-fetchedness. Highly effective story of the child and the bow-and-arrow (part II, chapter 6) and good characterization of the playboy-sportsman central character – very much of that era when one was expected to behave like a gentleman at Wimbledon."


Publication history

* 1944: Dodd Mead and Company (New York), June 1944, Hardcover, 242 pp * 1944: Collins Crime Club (London), July 1944, Hardcover, 160 pp * 1947:
Pocket Books Pocket Books is a division of Simon & Schuster that primarily publishes paperback books. History Pocket Books produced the first mass-market, pocket-sized paperback books in the United States in early 1939 and revolutionized the publishing in ...
(New York), Paperback, 210 pp (Pocket number 398) * 1948:
Pan Books Pan Books is a publishing imprint that first became active in the 1940s and is now part of the British-based Macmillan Publishers, owned by the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group of Germany. Pan Books began as an independent publisher, est ...
, Paperback, 195 pp (Pan number 54) * 1959: Fontana Books (Imprint of
HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Cor ...
), Paperback, 192 pp * 1972: Ulverscroft
Large-print Large-print (also large-type or large-font) refers to the formatting of a book or other text document in which the typeface (or font) are considerably larger than usual to accommodate people who have low vision. Frequently the medium is also increa ...
Edition, Hardcover, 347 pp; * 1973: Greenway edition of collected works (William Collins), Hardcover, 224 pp * 1974: Greenway edition of collected works (Dodd Mead), Hardcover, 224 pp; * 1977:
Penguin Books Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.Collier's Weekly ''Collier's'' was an American general interest magazine founded in 1888 by Peter Fenelon Collier. It was launched as ''Collier's Once a Week'', then renamed in 1895 as ''Collier's Weekly: An Illustrated Journal'', shortened in 1905 to ''Colli ...
'' in three instalments from 6 May (Volume 113, Number 19) to 20 May 1944 (Volume 113, Number 21) under the title ''Come and Be Hanged!'' with illustrations by Charles La Salle. In October and November 1944, it was serialized with illustrations under that same title as a supplement to ''
The Mail (Adelaide) The ''Sunday Mail'' (originally titled ''The Mail'') is an Adelaide newspaper first published on 4 May 1912 by Clarence Moody. Through much of the 20th century, '' The Advertiser'' was Adelaide's morning broadsheet, '' The News'' the afternoon t ...
'', in Australia. Portions are missing from the newspapers scanned by Trove, so the exact dates are not certain, save for the start on 7 October 1944.


Adaptations


Stage

In 1956, Christie adapted the book into a play with Gerald Verner. It was first published by
Samuel French Ltd. Samuel French, Inc. is an American company, founded by Samuel French and Thomas Hailes Lacy, who formed a partnership to combine their existing interests in London and New York City. It publishes Play (theatre), plays, represents authors, and se ...
in 1957. The play was first staged in September 1956 at the St James Theatre in the West End of London. Christie first wrote a stage play under this title in 1945, with one week of performances in Martha's Vineyard. The script was uncovered in 2015 by Julius Green. ''Towards Zero'' was included in the 1978 Christie play collection, ''
The Mousetrap and Other Plays ''The Mousetrap and Other Plays'' is a collection of plays by English crime novelist Agatha Christie, published by G. P. Putnam's Sons on 25 November 1978. The eight plays had been previously published individually between 1944 and 1960, and al ...
''. It was performed in 2019 at The Maddermarket Theatre, Norwich, England, using the play as written by Agatha Christie in 1945 and recently "unearthed by author Julius Green." As the only prior staging using this script was in Martha's Vineyard in the United States, the theatre claims this as the first performance of this version of the 1945 stage play in Europe.


Film

In 1995, a film adaptation lost its support from Agatha Christie's estate. When
Rosalind Hicks Rosalind Margaret Clarissa Hicks (formerly Prichard, née Christie; 5 August 1919 – 28 October 2004) was the only child of author Agatha Christie. Biography Rosalind Margaret Clarissa Christie was born on 5 August 1919 in her grandmother's ...
, Christie's daughter and controller of her estate, reviewed the script, with such issues as incest in the script, she ordered that the name of the film be changed as well as the names of the characters. The film became ''
Innocent Lies ''Innocent Lies'' is a 1995 thriller film directed by Patrick Dewolf and starring Stephen Dorff, Gabrielle Anwar, Adrian Dunbar and Joanna Lumley. It is a loose adaptation of the 1944 Agatha Christie novel ''Towards Zero''. Keira Knightley, app ...
'' and was met with mediocre success. In 2007, French filmmakers adapted the novel to ''
Towards Zero ''Towards Zero'' is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in June 1944, and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in July of the same year. The first US edition of the novel retailed ...
'', titled in French as '' L'Heure Zéro''.


Television

In 2007, the novel was adapted as part of the third season of the ''
Agatha Christie's Marple ''Agatha Christie's Marple'' (or simply ''Marple'') is a British ITV (TV network), ITV television programme loosely based on the books and short stories by British crime novelist Agatha Christie. The title character was played by Geraldine McEw ...
'' television series produced by
ITV ITV or iTV may refer to: ITV *Independent Television (ITV), a British television network, consisting of: ** ITV (TV network), a free-to-air national commercial television network covering the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islan ...
.
Geraldine McEwan Geraldine McEwan (born Geraldine McKeown; 9 May 1932 – 30 January 2015) was an English actress, who had a long career in film, theatre and television. Michael Coveney described her, in a tribute article, as "a great comic stylist, with a ...
plays Miss Marple. The novel did not include Miss Marple; other characters are changed as well for this adaptation to fit the series approach.
Superintendent Battle Superintendent Battle is a fictional character created by Agatha Christie who appeared in five of her novels. Novels featuring Superintendent Battle He appears as a detective in the following novels: * ''The Secret of Chimneys'' (1925) * ''The ...
is replaced by Superintendent Mallard played by
Alan Davies Alan Roger Davies (; born 6 March 1966) is an English stand-up comedian, writer, actor and TV presenter. He is best known for his portrayal of the title role in the BBC mystery drama series ''Jonathan Creek'' (1997–2016) and as the only perm ...
. In 2019, the novel was again adapted as an episode of French television series ''
Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie is a French (comedic Police procedural, police crime drama) television program consisting of two series based loosely on Agatha Christie, Agatha Christie's works of detective fiction, first broadcast on France 2 on 9 January 2009 in television ...
''.


Radio

In 2010, Joy Wilkinson adapted ''Towards Zero'' as a radio play, first transmitted in January 2010, in four parts, each 30 minutes by
BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...
. The cast includes: *Nevile –
Hugh Bonneville Hugh Richard Bonneville Williams (born 10 November 1963) is an English actor. He is best known for portraying Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham, in the ITV historical drama series ''Downton Abbey''. His performance on the show earned him a nom ...
*Lady Tresselian –
Marcia Warren Marcia Warren (born 26 November 1942) is an English stage, film and television actress. On stage, she appeared in '' Blithe Spirit'' as Madame Arcati and '' The Sea'' (2008) at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. She is currently appearing in Netflix' ...
*Tom MacWhirter –
Tom Mannion Tom Mannion is a Scottish actor. His television credits include ''Brookside'', ''Up the Garden Path'', ''The Bill'', ''Boon'', '' Cadfael'', '' Doctor Finlay'', '' Doctors'', ''Eleventh Hour'', ''Holby City'', ''Roman Mysteries'', '' Hustle'', ...
*Audrey –
Claire Rushbrook Claire Louise Rushbrook (born 25 August 1971) is an English actress. She is best known for her role as Roxanne in '' Secrets & Lies.'' Early life Claire Louise Rushbrook was born on 25 August 1971 in Hitchin, Hertfordshire. She attended Fearnh ...
*Mary –
Julia Ford Julia Ford (born 7 August 1963) is a British actress, voice actress and director. Early life She was born in Chester, Cheshire and grew up in Sutton Weaver. She attended Helsby County Grammar School. Career Her acting work includes theatre, ...
*Kay – Lizzy Watts *Latimer –
Joseph Kloska Joseph Anthony Kloska (born 1983) is an English actor. He began his career in radio, moving on to work in television, theatre, and film. Life Named after a Polish grandfather, Teofil Joseph Kloska, who had settled in England, Kloska was brought ...
*Royde – Stephen Hogan *Treves, Constable – David Hargreaves *Umpire/Butler, Inspector Leach – Philip Fox *Receptionist –
Annabelle Dowler Annabelle Dowler (born 1974) is an English actress. She was born and raised in Formby, Merseyside, and attended Holy Family High School. She studied Spanish and Drama at the University of Bristol before touring Spain with a bilingual drama group. ...
*Porter, Doctor Lazenby – Benjamin Askew *Sergeant – Matt Addis


References


External links


''Towards Zero''
at the official Agatha Christie website
''Towards Zero''
at the new Agatha Christie official website
Dustjacket
of the first US edition at the
New York Public Library The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second largest public library in the United States (behind the Library of Congress ...
digital gallery * * * {{Agatha Christie 1944 British novels Novels by Agatha Christie Plays by Agatha Christie 1956 plays Novels first published in serial form Works originally published in Collier's Dodd, Mead & Co. books British novels adapted into films British novels adapted into television shows Superintendent Battle sr:Нулта тачка