Towards Zero

By: Agatha Christie

Narrated by: Full Cast, Hugh Bonneville, Marcia Warren, Philip Fox

Lady Tresselian invites several guests to stay at her seaside house at Gull’s Point. Against her better judgment she has allowed her late husband’s ward, handsome tennis ace Neville Strange, and his wife Kay to come at the same time as Neville’s ex-wife Audrey. Other guests include Mary, Lady Tresselian’s companion; Ted, Kay’s ever-present friend; Thomas, a family friend who has just returned from spending the war in Africa and Lady Tresselian’s old friend Lord Justice Treves. When death visits Gull’s Point the house party is thrown into turmoil. It is left to Scotland Yard’s Detective Inspector Leach and Mr MacWhirter, an ex-detective who is also house guest, to solve the case.

Fantastic

So well done! I never imagined the story this darkly. The music is eerie and atmospheric.

Irritating

This is not one of Christie's better known stories but I've always liked it. It's atmospheric and I've always thought the murder and motive quite clever and surprising. In general, the performers do quite a nice job, though the person who plays the Met inspector (and why is it a "Met inspector" when it's supposed to be Superintendent Battle???) overdoes it and makes the character unattractive. The real problem, though, is whoever adapted the original story. I've come to terms with adaptions that change the original story out of love and respect for it, that seem to play with the characters or story in order to examine various aspects of the original in a new light. It's taken me a while to get to that point, but the new Marples and Poirots on TV have finally brought me to being a bit more open minded about my Christie adaptions. This adaption, however, does not play with the story or characters in order to examine them in a new light, it just changes them for no good reason other than that it seems to think Christie's original plot wasn't smart enough so it will fix it up by making a number of the attractive characters into jerks. In my opinion, Christie's original plot was quite good enough, and this is a significant worsening of the situation. I particularly resent the way they changed the character of Mary, who's always been a favorite of mine. I'd avoid this if you actually like this book.

Not Impressed

I generally enjoyed the dramatized versions but this was not very good. They took too many liberties and changed the story so much, and the characters, that it was beginning to be unpleasant. In fact, I could not wait for it to be over.