Destination Unknown

Destination Unknown is a work of spy fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 1 November 1954 and in US by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1955 under the title of So Many Steps to Death. The UK edition retailed at ten shillings and sixpence (10/6) and the US edition at $2.75.The novel opens in Morocco, where Hilary Craven is staying after a failed marriage. She plans to commit suicide, but is instead recruited by the British secret service for a mission. She is asked to impersonate the wife of a nuclear scientist who has recently disappeared. Hilary is soon transported to meet her new "husband". Reviews at the time of publication in 1954-1955 found the novel timely, and clearly more fun for Mrs Christie to write than her usual mystery novels. One reviewer was clear in saying that mystery novels were her strong suit and this type of novel was not, yet it was worth reading. A later review, by Robert Barnard, felt the novel started well, but digressed as it found its way to the resolution, and “topples into hokum”. He mentioned the highly valued scientists who worked at Los Alamos during World War II on the atomic bomb and disappeared when peace came as the premise for the novel; Bruno Pontecorvo, who defected to the Soviet Union in 1950, and Klaus Fuchs, theoretical physicist who sent secret information to the Soviet Union and was imprisoned about that same time for that crime. It is one of only four Christie novels not to have received an adaptation of any kind, the others being Death Comes as the End, Passenger to Frankfurt, and Postern of Fate.