Is any bowler more dreaded by the batsmen of detection than Mrs. Christie? Towards Zero will get a great many wickets, or I'm heavily mistaken in the acumen of my friends. Halfway through the book I've asked them "Who did it?" Three-quarters way through I ask them again—and the names they reluctantly murmur are never the same both times. It is not a trick of Mrs. Christie's: it's her devilish art. There are about six subjects in Towards Zero, and she focuses our attention on each in turn. Some look too guilty; some look too innocent. Some have an opportunity, but where's the motive? Some have a motive, but where's the opportunity? So it goes on. The reader wobbles and wavers, and shrinks from a decision: and Mrs. Christie quietly bowls you out…. [The] struggle to coach victims against Mrs. Christie is utterly hopeless.

The scene of the murder in Towards Zero is a country house by an estuary on the South Coast. I can devise no way of outlining the plot without forestalling some of the excitement and bewilderment. But the solution is by Superintendent Battle, not by Poirot. That indicates that Mrs. Christie does not regard this work as flawless by her own supreme, standard. The flaw is that the solution is only completed by the criminal's confession; and there should be no need for confession in a perfect specimen of detection. (p. 94)