Towards Zero - by Agatha Christie - Audio Book CD
5 CDs - 6.3 Hours:
About Towards Zero
Lady Tressilian, a past times and humourless woman confined to her bed, invites several guests into her seaside home of Gull's Point for two weeks at the end of the summer. Tennis star Nevile Strange, former ward of Lady Tressilian's deceased husband, incurs her displeasure by bringing both his new wife, Kay, and his ex-wife, Audrey, thus causing awkward romantic misunderstandings. But events shortly become sinister when female Tressilian is killed and Superintendent Battle, which is holidaying close in the home of his nephew, Inspector James Leach, has himself in a labyrinthine maze of clues and deception.The novel was first serialised in Collier's Weekly in three installments from 6 May (Volume 113, Number 19) to 20 May 1944 (Volume 113, quantity 21) under the title Come and Be Hanged! with illustrations by Charles La Salle. The first U.S. edition of the novel retailed at .00 and the UK edition at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6). The review by Maurice Willson Disher in The Times Literary pill of 22 July 1944 was overwhelmingly positive: "Undiscriminating admirers of Miss Christie must clearly 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 will make 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 systems imposed upon fiction's police, but even when the maze is vaguely recognized the tale still grips. The characters become so a great deal a role of the reader�?Ts existence that he must know what their ultimate fate may be before he will rest satisfied. How live they are is apparent when two guys, both dogged, laconic, poker-faced, never seem alike. The spouse and the ex-spouse, who neither like nor dislike one another, also reveal creative power. As an exhibition of the contemporary brand of human nature, Towards Zero deserves higher praises than any that can be awarded to it as an excellent detective story."
About Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa, Lady Mallowan, DBE (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976), commonly known as Agatha Christie, was an English crime fiction writer of novels, short stories and plays. She also wrote romance novels under the name Mary Westmacott, but is best remembered for her 80 detective novels and her successful West End theatre plays. Her works, particularly featuring detectives Hercule Poirot or Miss Jane Marple, have given her the title the 'Queen of Crime' and made her one of the most important and innovative writers in the development of the genre.
Agatha Christie was born in Torquay, in the county of Devon, as the daughter of Frederick Alvah Miller, an American with a moderate private income, and Clarissa Miller. Her father died when she was a child. Agatha Christie was educated home, where her mother encouraged her to write from very early age. At sixteen she was sent to school in Paris where she studied singing and piano.
Christie has been called — by the Guinness Book of World Records, among others — the best-selling writer of books of all time and the best-selling writer of any kind, along with William Shakespeare. Only the Bible is known to have outsold her collected sales of roughly four billion copies of novels. UNESCO states that she is currently the most translated individual author in the world with only the collective corporate works of Walt Disney Productions superseding her.. As an example of her broad appeal, she is the all-time best-selling author in France, with over 40 million copies sold in French (as of 2003) versus 22 million for Emile Zola, the nearest contender.
Her stage play, The Mousetrap, holds the record for the longest initial run in the world, opening at the Ambassadors Theatre in London on 25 November 1952, and as of 2008 is still running after more than 20,000 performances. In 1955, Christie was the first recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's highest honor, the Grand Master Award, and in the same year, Witness for the Prosecution was given an Edgar Award by the MWA, for Best Play. Most of her books and short stories have been filmed, some many times over (Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, 4.50 From Paddington), and many have been adapted for television, radio, video games and comics. |
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