Destination Unknown (novel)
Dust-jacket illustration of the first UK edition
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| Author | Agatha Christie |
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| Cover artist | Not known |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Crime novel |
| Publisher | Collins Crime Club |
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Publication date
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1 November 1954 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 192 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| Preceded by | A Pocket Full of Rye |
| Followed by | Hickory Dickory Dock |
Destination Unknown is a work of detective 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.
It is one of only four Christie novels to have not received an adaptation of any kind (such as screen, stage or radio) and one of only five of her novels to have not received a screen adaptation, the others being Death Comes as the End, Passenger to Frankfurt, Postern of Fate and Crooked House.
Hilary Craven, a deserted wife and bereaved mother, is planning suicide in a Moroccan hotel, when she is asked by British secret agent Jessop to undertake a dangerous mission as an alternative to taking an overdose of sleeping pills. The task, which she accepts, is to impersonate a dying woman to help find the woman's husband, Thomas Betterton, a nuclear scientist who has disappeared and may have defected to the Soviet Union. Soon she finds herself in a group of travellers being transported to the unknown destination of the title.
The destination turns out to be a secret scientific research facility disguised as a modern leper colony and leprosy research center at a remote location in the Atlas Mountains. The fabulously wealthy Mr Aristides has built the facility and lured the world's best young scientists to it so that he can later sell their services back to the world's governments and corporations for a huge profit, after having removed the scientists' resistance through lobotomies. The scientists are not allowed to leave the facility, and they are locked in secret areas deep inside the mountain whenever government officials and other outsiders visit.
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Wikipedia