And Then There Were 33: Towards Zero by Agatha Christie

All About Agatha Christie

Catherine Brobeck & Kemper Donovan

Tv & Film, Books, Film Reviews, Arts

4.7 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 21 April 2019

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Christie rarely deals in psychopaths, but when she does she tends to handle them with panache, and this novel is no exception. (Not a spoiler, as we are put on our guard almost immediately that a psycho lurks in these pages....) While it is by no means one of our absolute favorites, we quite enjoyed this one, which features a number of familiar Christie tropes spun/twisted in ingeniously dark ways.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to All About Agatha, the podcast dedicated to reading and ranking every single mystery novel written by the Queen of Crime Dame Agatha Christie.
0:12.8	I'm Kemper Donovan.
0:14.0	I'm Catherine Brobach.
0:15.4	And this week we are discussing the novel Towards Zero.
0:19.6	A fan favorite of many readers and listeners out there.
0:23.7	Many of you have shared with us that you are very excited
0:26.5	that we have at long last reached towards Zero
0:29.2	in this, the second half of the Christie of that we are now embarking on. I know. I know that seems crazy.
0:37.2	It does seem crazy but you know what that means we have 33 titles to go and this is the first. So let's begin and talk a little bit about the
0:46.0	publication history. So it was published in June in 1944 by Dodd Me to the US and
0:52.1	then the next month in July by Collins Crime.
0:55.0	The novel was first serialized in the US in Collier's Weekly as it so often was in
1:01.2	three installments in May 1944. The interesting point about that is the title that it was
1:06.6	serialized under, which is Come and Be Hanged, Exclamation Point.
1:11.4	Wow. Yeah. I much prefer towards zero.
1:16.3	Towards zero is actually in some ways one of her better titles that we've come across given what it means structurally.
1:25.2	I agree. There's a thematic through line to the title that is pleasing and we don't always get that.
1:31.3	Nursery-arm titles, etc.
1:34.2	I suppose we should get right into it
1:35.8	and talk about our victims.
1:37.9	I will start with our first victim,
1:41.4	who is Mr. Treves an elderly retired solicitor who dies from a heart
	...

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