When a number of leading scientists disappear without a trace, concern grows within the international intelligence community. Are they being kidnapped? Blackmailed? Brainwashed? 

One woman appears to have the key to the mystery. Unfortunately, Olive Betteron now lies in a hospital bed, dying from injuries sustained in a Moroccan plane crash. 

Meanwhile, in a Casablanca hotel room, Hilary Craven prepares to take her own life. But her suicide attempt is about to be interrupted by a man who will offer her an altogether more thrilling way to die.

I read half of ‘Destination Unknown‘ before I set it aside in recognition of my waning interest in the plot and the people. In my head, it had become ‘Destination Unbelievable’, which isn’t a title that could carry me to the end of the book.

The start of the book hooked me. I loved Christie’s original take on the concept of a suicide mission – finding someone ready to commit suicide and offering them a more useful way to die. The idea of a suicidal heroine must have been seen as quite daring in 1954. Suicide was a criminal offence in England until 1961.

I liked Hilary Craven and, for a while, I thought I was in for a reprise of ‘They Came To Bagdhad‘ which was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, by the time I was a third of the way through, I could see that ‘Destination Unknown‘ lacked the momentum of the earlier book. I enjoyed seeing how air travel worked in 1954 and feeling the impact of Britain’s post-war currency restrictions and getting a feel for Morocco but that didn’t make up for the plodding pace of the plot.

When, at the halfway mark (many pages too late it seemed to me), Hilary Craven is finally about to be ushered in to the Chrisitie equivalent of a James Bond Villain’s secret base, I should have been excited. I wasn’t. The simplistic politics and the mad-scientist, evil fascist and dewey-eyed communist stereotypes where annoying me. The overall global conspiracy idea felt too comic book for me. I neither believed in it or cared about it. Even my curiosity about whether / how Hilary Craven would find her way back to a life worth living wasn’t enough to keep me reading, so I set the book aside.