Agatha Christie's 'Towards Zero'

The queen of crime thriller dame Agatha Christie is one of my 

most favorite authors. I like her novels and stories for two

reasons. First, the plots of the novels and the stories

and the other is that her characters and plots can be fitted 

anywhere irrespective of time and place. Sometimes i also 

feel that they are known to me. I can find them in everyday 

live. 



She had written 76 crime novel and short stories. Although 

'Murder of Roger Acroyd' is considered as her masterpiece, 

in my opinion, her masterpiece is towards zero.



In this novel, the main character Nevile Strange is a well

known tennis player. Externally he is very sober and very 

sporting who always accepts his loss with smile. but in core

he is cruel and revengeful. His first wife Audre Strange 

leaves him for another man. To take the revenge neville plot

a murder of lady Tresselian in such a way that entire 

suspicion will fall on Audrey and she will be hanged for 

murder which she never commited. When audre saw that

there is no way to prove her innocence she accepted the false

charge against her and tried to take her own life. She was 

saved by a man called Mr. Macwhirter. he and superintendent 

Battle ( who is the incharge of the case) make a trap for 

Neville to make him confess. 



According to supt. battle it is not fair that in every detective
story murder happens in first act. But murder should be the 

climax of the story. It will take place in the fifth act of the

play. Every people and every incident will converge to that
climax or that ultimate murder.



In this novel, the climax is the murder of Audre Strange which

is planed by Neville Strange. The murder of lady Tressilian is 

only a step of it, not the ultimate murder.



I like this novel very much, because the novel is dependent

on psychological crime, which is Agatha's specialty. Every 

character of this novel has a different type of psychology 

and you will find their natures familiar to you. We often see

people like Neville, Audre, Kay (another character in the novel),

Mary supt. Battle's daughter. In this novel Agatha creates

a perfect climate of murder successfully.