Towards Zero: Mystery Play in Three Acts

by Agatha Christie, Gerald Verner

A murder mystery set in a clifftop house in three acts

When a house party gathers at Gull's Point, the seaside home of Lady Tressilian, Neville Strange finds himself caught between his old wife Audrey and his new flame Kay. A nail-biting thriller, the play probes the psychology of jealousy in the shadow of a savage and brutal murder. A carefully unpeeled investigation before our eyes brings the story to a pointed ending.

The play, by Agatha Christie and Gerald Verner, premiered in the West End at the St. James's Theatre in September, 1956 produced by Peter Saunders - producer of The Mousetrap.

Genres: Plays, Agatha Christie, Theatre, Mystery, Crime, Fiction, Novella

86 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1956

About the author

Agatha Christie also wrote romance novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, and was occasionally published under the name Agatha Christie Mallowan.

Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE (née Miller) was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap, which has been performed in the West End of London since 1952. A writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Christie has been called the "Queen of Crime". She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.

This best-selling author of all time wrote 66 crime novels and story collections, fourteen plays, and six novels under a pseudonym in romance. Her books sold more than a billion copies in the English language and a billion in translation. According to Index Translationum, people translated her works into 103 languages at least, the most for an individual author. Of the most enduring figures in crime literature, she created Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple. She atuhored The Mousetrap, the longest-running play in the history of modern theater.

Associated Names:
Agata Christie
Agata Kristi
Агата Кристи (Russian)
Агата Крісті (Ukrainian)
Αγκάθα Κρίστι (Greek)
アガサ クリスティ (Japanese)
阿嘉莎·克莉絲蒂 (Chinese)

Reviews

[Alan (The Lone Librarian) Teder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Towards Zero: Stage Play #2
A review of the Samuel French paperback (January 18, 2019) of the 2nd version of the play (1956) adapted from the original novel Towards Zero (1944).

Let's immediately clear up the Confusion for Completists by saying that Version 2 (1956) of the play is written in collaboration with Gerald Verner (1897-1980) as can be seen on the cover of this edition. Towards Zero Version 1 (1945) has no credited collaborator and is also known as the Martha's Vineyard (where it was first performed) or the Outdoor Version.

A quick way to distinguish the two versions is that the 1945 has the butler O'Donnell as a character who also speaks the first line. In 1945 the Superintendant Battle character does not appear. In the 1956 version, O'Donnell is not a character and Kay Strange speaks the first line. In 1956 both Superintendant Battle and Inspector Leach appear.

I'm not going to go into further character or plot details here. This version seemed very close to the novel even with the limitations of the single drawing room location of the theatrical set. I still need to read the 1945 version in order to have a complete view for comparison. You can read my review of the novel at Zero Hour.

This play counts against my Complete Agatha Christie binge goal, so I now have 21 novels (if I include the 6 published under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott), 5 short story collections, 12.5* theatrical plays (+ several harder to find 1-act radio plays) and 1 autobiography left to go.

Footnote
* I'm counting Towards Zero #2 as 1/2 a play with Towards Zero #1 as the other 1/2.

Trivia and Links
The original novel Towards Zero was considered as one of Agatha Christie's Top Ten Favourite Own Books.

Aside from the stage plays, the original novel Towards Zero has been adapted several times for film and TV as follows:
For the film Innocent Lies (1995).
For the French language film L'Heure zéro (2007).
For the TV Series Agatha Christie's Marple (2004-2013) as Season3 Episode 3 (2007). Miss Marple was not a character in the original book, so she was added in here in order to create additional scripts for the TV series when they ran out of Miss Marple novels to adapt.
For the French language TV Series Les Petits Meurtres D'Agatha Christie as L'Heure zéro (2019).
For the recent BBC TV Series Towards Zero (2025).

[Alan (The Lone Librarian) Teder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Towards Zero: Stage Play #1
A review of the Samuel French paperback (September 6, 2018) of the 1st version of the play (1945) adapted from the original novel Towards Zero (1944).

This is now the 4th version of Towards Zero that I've read or seen. There was the 1944 novel, the 1956 stage adaptation and the 2025 BBC TV series. This edition is the 1st version of the play from 1945, coming only shortly after the novel. All of the versions end in the same way, but characters are either dropped or have names changed in each one.

I thought this one adhered quite closely to the novel, except for dropping the Superintendent Battle character. Too many inspectors would be confusing and Inspector Leach is sufficient, especially since it isn't the authorities that solve the crime. The old solicitor Mr. Treves character is also dropped which means there is no one to tell the story of the childhood killing. Christie also changed some other character names (the novel's Ted Latimer becomes Peter de Costa, the novel's Mary Aldin becomes Janet Collier), perhaps just to mix things up and have the audience still guessing if the ending might be different as well.

The main difference is the stage design, which in 1945 was done as if it was taking place on the outside terrace of Lady Tressilian's house. That is why this is sometimes nicknamed as the "Outdoor Version." The 1956 stage setting is a drawing room inside the house.

Once I finish my complete reading of the canonical works of Agatha Christie, I will have to read some of the later books about her theatrical works. Hopefully those will explain why there are 2 versions of the Towards Zero play. The ones that I'll be looking for are Julius Green's Curtain Up: Agatha Christie: A Life in the Theatre – The First Biography of the Playwright by a Producer of Her Plays, with Groundbreaking Discoveries and Unpublished Scripts (2015) and Amnon Kabatchnik's Murder in the West End: The Plays of Agatha Christie and Her Disciples Volume 1 (2024) and Murder in the West End Volume II: The Plays of Agatha Christie and Her Disciples (2024).

The theatrical play Towards Zero counts as 1/2 play* against my Complete Agatha Christie binge read goal, so I now have 9 novels (including 3 remaining Westmacotts), 2 short story collections, 8 full-length theatrical plays, 2 short 1-Act plays and 1 autobiography left to go.

Footnote
* I'm counting the two stage versions of Towards Zero #1 (1945) & #2 (1956) each as 1/2 a play.

Reckoning
As best as I know, the 8 remaining full length plays on my list are:
Black Coffee (1930).
The Secret of Chimneys (1931) [was a lost play not on my original list, it was rediscovered and finally performed in 2003].
The Stranger (1932).
Akhnaton (1937).
Murder on the Nile (1944).
Spider's Web (1954).
A Daughter's A Daughter (1956).
Fiddlers Three (1972).
In addition there are several full length plays that have been posthumously adapted from Agatha Christie novels by other people, but I am not counting them as part of the canon. For a complete listing see the works at Concord Theatricals listed under Agatha Christie.
The above list does not include the shorter one-act plays and/or radio plays.

Trivia and Links
The original novel Towards Zero was considered as one of Agatha Christie's Top Ten Favourite Own Books.

Aside from the stage plays, the original novel Towards Zero has been adapted several times for film and TV as follows:
For the film Innocent Lies (1995).
For the French language film L'Heure zéro (2007).
For the TV Series Agatha Christie's Marple (2004-2013) as Season3 Episode 3 (2007). Miss Marple was not a character in the original book, so she was added in here in order to create additional scripts for the TV series when they ran out of Miss Marple novels to adapt.
For the French language TV Series Les Petits Meurtres D'Agatha Christie as L'Heure zéro (2019).
For the recent BBC TV Series Towards Zero (2025).

[Rosamund · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very enjoyable read as a short story in effect.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had no idea whodunnit but was still enthralled up until the end.

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

"I've met people like you before--people with a mental kink."

Good grief, this is just awful!

In the mid-1950s, Christie had a number of plays running in London in fair succession, including 'The Mousetrap' and 'Witness for the Prosecution'. And 'Towards Zero' was among them. Strangely, it managed to run a respectable 5 months - but apparently it was not among her standout achievements. 

Based on one of her novels I've not yet read, Christie adapted it for the stage in collaboration with fellow mystery writer Gerald Verner. What's particularly odd in that regard is that, to the 'visual ear', precious little of the dialogue seems Christie-esque. Much of it, in fact, leaves one thinking, 'You can't be serious - really?!' ~ which is to say... it's bad. 

Saddled with a tiresome jealousy theme, what follows from there is an absurd premise... replete with a fairly colorless cast of characters.

I almost gave up the read by the end of Act One. But I suddenly became curious: how wrongheaded could it be? 

Turns out: rather. I started thinking that maybe the most effective production might result if the whole thing were done as parody, complete with exaggeration. I did get a number of laughs out of the script that way. Who knows?; maybe as a comedy it could really fly. It could maybe be wildly entertaining with merriment galore - though that would, of course, be a far cry from the authors' intent.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome! Really hope this is one of the Agatha Christie's being adapted into a miniseries!

[Patrick Neylan · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you ever see a parody of an English drawing-room murder mystery, this is what's being parodied. It's nonsense, full of cliche and cardboard cut-out upper-middle-class characters speaking in melodramatic and unrealistic dialogue. And it's long. Being a "well-made play", it has two long acts followed by a shorter third act. Who knows why anyone ever thought such an unbalanced structure should be called "well-made", but that's mid-20th century theatre for you.

The murder plot is ridiculously convoluted and the solution requires leaps of conjecture to which, without a confession, any defence lawyer could easily counter with the simple words: "Bollocks. Prove it."

I can't imagine anyone performing this play at all seriously. It might raise a few laughs, but not in the way the author intended.

[Matthew Hodge · Rating 2 out of 5]

Look, maybe I just don't have the stamina for the homestretch of Agatha Christie books, but this play version of Towards Zero seems to be full of two-dimensional characters, any one of whom can be the murderer because any information we're presented is guaranteed to be a red herring until the end of the third act ...

While I'm sure an amateur theatre company would have fun with a play like this, which reduces a whole book's action to something that gets played out in a single room, it's a little bit underwhelming.

[Gail Sacharski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another Christie book adapted as a play &, as in previous plays, the original detective (in this case, Superintendent Battle) has been removed from the cast as well as various other extra characters who, in the book, provide clues, but aren't needed in the play. The murderer, the murder, & the reason remain the same; the difference is that the character of the man who tried to commit suicide has an expanded role &, more or less, takes the place of Battle & solves the crime rather than just provides the needed clue. This play was quite enjoyable.

[Fred · Rating 5 out of 5]

A pleasant refresher of the events of the novel. Always fab to read a theatre script from Dame Agatha!

[Taylor's♡Shelf · Rating 5 out of 5]

"It would seem like the course of true love has not run smoothly."

You don't say.

Before reading this adaptation, I had only read one or two novels featuring Superintendent Battle, the novel Towards Zero not being one of them. Although he may not have as much of a presence or personality as his flamboyant Belgian counterpart, I think this may actually be a point in his favour. Sometimes I feel the actual plot of a Poirot novel takes second stage to the puffed-up, colourful presence of the detective himself. I like secondary characters that speak for themselves - and in this story, they really do (I have a bit of a literary fetish for the lovelorn bystander from childhood trope. This story would have had to be really bad to lose my attention.) For this reason, I'll definitely continue to read the Battle series no matter the medium.

That being said, I can't comment on the actual adaptation of the secondary work. All I can say is that I'll certainly be adding the novel to my list of upcoming reads. And if an adaptation can convince you to read the primary work, then I think it's done its job.
 
BONUS:

Leach: Look at these stains. That's blood, or I'm Marilyn Monroe.
Battle: ...You're certainly not Marilyn Monroe, Jim.

Just how I like my comedy. Dry as sand.

[Salli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Why is everyone writing reviews on this ISBN number about the book when this is the play!

This is the version staged outdoors not indoors and actually fully written by Agatha Christie.

It's very wordy and quite hard to stage realistically and quite hard to act to show the underlying but hidden emotional content. I think the problem is we don't want the murderer to be quite a lot of the characters and so many of them seem just too old to be bothered to kill. I've read better.

[Lindsay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actually did a pretty good job keeping me guessing, and not overly contrived. Plenty of the usual Agatha Christie tropes, but they work reasonably well.

[Henriette Strydom · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good book when it gets going.