At the prologue, veteran lawyer Mr Treves remarked that investigations at a murder oft looked at the murder as the starting point when oft murder was the end and that the real story began long before.

And so Agatha Christie introduced many disparate threads in the beginning that appeared to have absolutely no relationship whatsoever with each other - Inspector Battle's daughter getting into trouble in school, a failed suicide of a man let down by the world when all he did was to be honest, a young man getting his wife and ex-wife down to his adopted country seat home at Gull's Point.

The deaths did not come in until about half the book, the first person to make the exit being Mr Treve himself. Next was the elderly widow Lady Tressilian, matron of Gull's Point.

Rounding up the usual suspects, we have Neville Strange, young, rich, semi-pro sportsman; his second wife Kay, a glamorous hothead from the Riviera; his divorced first wife Audrey, a complete contrast in character to Kay, stately, willowy and dignified; Thomas Royde, family friend on home visit from Malaya, devoted to Audrey for years; Edward Latimer, friend to and similarly devoted to Kay; Mary Adlin, Lady Tressilian's companion and manager of the household; plus an assortment of domestic help.

Did Kay kill Lady Tresslian, thinking she would be the beneficiary to the legacy as wife of Neville Strange? Especially when Neville declared he intended to divorce her to get Audrey back.

Was Audrey the culprit, knowing she was the actual beneficiacry, being the wife of Neville when the will was drawn up, mentioned in name specifically?

Or was it Neville, to thwart Lady Tresillian's objections to his divorcing Kay to get Audrey? Much as Lady Tresillian disliked his first divorce and his second wife and as much as she liked Audrey, she disapproved of his irresponsible behaviour.

Or perhaps it was Edward, confidante to Kay, who thought of doing her a favour by securing her an inheritance.

Or even Mary, who could be a repressed woman.

Slowly, possible motives and opportunities emerged for the suspects. Inspector Battle who had to cut short his trip found himself applying the lessons he learned from his daughter and from Hercule Poirot to detect the fiendishly cunning traps set by the murderer.

It was one of the more difficult puzzles created by Christie. While readers may be justified in feeling upset when characters narration were purposely withheld from them, enough clues and hints and omens were given in the book to point them to the culprit.

It would take a patient and careful reader to pick up all the clues and be able to see the final light when the last piece of the puzzle was revealed.

This has to be one of Agatha Christie's best ever books. There are a lot of them, yes (Around 15!) but i would suggest that this taut thriller is probably within the top five.

The characters are very well drawn. Realistic and believeable. The story is tense, not too overdramatic, and suspenseful. The story begins brilliantly (rather like the beginning of And Then there Were None) with all the characters seperately going about their own thing, slowly unfolding the reasons why they come to be at Gull's Point over this fateful weekend. It opens with esteemed lawyers discussing criminal trials...then moves to a murder carefully planning out the deed...onto newlywedded famous tennis player with his new wife Kay...to the attempted suicide of man by driving himself over a cliff. (A man to return to Gull's Point in the future to see the place where he almost died, only to become an important factor in a murder investigation that will change his life...and so on.

The setting is good. The plot is different from some of her other stuff. (Something all her best books have in common, an element of extreme originality in solution, plot, setting, or character.)

This is actually a brilliant thriller. The atmosphere is fear-filled, and the solution brilliant. She double-trumps the reader's expectations and assumptions once again, in an incredibly fine detective novel.

"Towards Zero," one of Christie's lesser-known works, is a stunner nonetheless. The plot is not constructed in her usual pattern; the murder comes rather late, and Christie's penchant for misdirection is perhaps at its best here. The story begins by pointing in one direction, then reverses itself and points in quite a different direction. The preliminary chapters are also unusual; they set the reader up for several surprises that come at the very end. Read this one carefully!