Destination Unknown (novel)
Encyclopedia
Destination Unknown is a work of detective fiction
by Agatha Christie
and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club
on November 1, 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.
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.
Hilary Craven successfully passes herself as Betterton's wife Olive, because he is miserable and wants desperately to escape. She falls in love with Andrew Peters, a handsome young American who was in the group with her on their journey to the facility. Through clues she has left along the way, Jessop eventually locates and rescues her and the others held there, with help from Peters, who turns out also to be a secret agent and the cousin of Betterton's first wife Elsa, whom Betterton had murdered. Betterton is arrested, Craven no longer wants to die, and she and Peters are free to begin their life together.
, it starts with a youngish woman who has married, had a daughter and whose husband has replaced her with someone else. In both books, a young man displays remarkable perceptiveness in spotting her intention to end her life and defies convention to save her, not only in tackling a stranger on intimate matters but in spending time in the woman's hotel bedroom to talk her out of suicide. In this story he talks her into espionage instead.
in its review, written by Philip John Stead, of November 19, 1954, was enthusiastic when it asked, "Where do scientists go when they vanish from the ken of the Security Services? A solution to this fascinating problem is propounded in Destination Unknown. While it must be admitted that the secret, when disclosed, smacks rather of The Thousand and One Nights than of modern international rivalry for scientific talents, it may surely be excused on the ground that it provides Mrs. Christie with a story-tellers holiday from the rigours of detective fiction. Readers may regret the absence of the tonic logicalities of crime's unravelling - though "clues" are not altogether missing - for the secret service story belongs largely to Adventure, but in their place is the author's obvious pleasure in the wider horizons of the more romantic genre." The review concluded, "However much the purist yearns for Poirot or Miss Marple, he can hardly deplore Mrs. Christie's bright, busy excursion into this topical and extravagant sphere."
Maurice Richardson of The Observer
of October 31, 1954, said, "The thriller is not Agatha Christie's forte; it makes her go all breathless and naïve." He concluded, "Needs to be read indulgently in a very comfortable railway carriage. She probably had a delicious busman's holiday writing it."
Robert Barnard
wrote, "Slightly above-average thriller, with excellent beginning (heroine, whose husband has left her for another woman, and whose small daughter had died, contemplates suicide in strange hotel). Thereafter topples over into hokum, with a notably unexciting climax. Mainly concerns disappearing scientists – it is written in the wake of the Fuchs/Pontecorvo affairs. Mentions the un-American Activities Committee, without obvious disapproval."
In the UK the novel was first serialised in the weekly magazine John Bull
in five abridged instalments from September 25 (Volume 96, Number 2517) to October 23, 1954 (Volume 96, Number 2521) with illustrations by William Little.
The novel was first serialised in the US in the Chicago Tribune
in fifty-one parts from Tuesday, April 12 to Thursday June 9, 1955 under the title of Destination X.
Detective fiction
Detective fiction is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator , either professional or amateur, investigates a crime, often murder.-In ancient literature:...
by Agatha Christie
Agatha Christie
Dame Agatha Christie DBE was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott, but she is best remembered for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections , and her successful West End plays.According to...
and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club
Collins Crime Club
The Collins Crime Club was an imprint of UK book publishers William Collins & Co Ltd and ran from May 6, 1930 to April 1994. Customers registered their name and address with the club and were sent a newsletter every three months which advised them of the latest books which had been or were to be...
on November 1, 1954 and in US by Dodd, Mead and Company
Dodd, Mead and Company
Dodd, Mead and Company was one of the pioneer publishing houses of the United States, based in New York City. Under several names, the firm operated from 1839 until 1990. Its history properly began in 1870, with the retirement of its founder, Moses Woodruff Dodd. Control passed to his son Frank...
in 1955 under the title of So Many Steps to Death. The UK edition retailed at ten shillings and sixpence
British sixpence coin
The sixpence, known colloquially as the tanner, or half-shilling, was a British pre-decimal coin, worth six pence, or 1/40th of a pound sterling....
(10/6) and the US edition at $2.75.
Plot summary
Hilary Craven, a deserted wife and bereaved mother, is planning suicideSuicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
in a Moroccan
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
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
Nuclear engineering
Nuclear engineering is the branch of engineering concerned with the application of the breakdown as well as the fusion of atomic nuclei and/or the application of other sub-atomic physics, based on the principles of nuclear physics...
scientist
Scientist
A scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method. The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science. This article focuses on the more restricted use of the word...
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
Leper colony
A leper colony, leprosarium, or lazar house is a place to quarantine leprous people.-History:Leper colonies or houses became widespread in the Middle Ages, particularly in Europe and India, and often run by monastic orders...
and leprosy
Leprosy
Leprosy or Hansen's disease is a chronic disease caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium lepromatosis. Named after physician Gerhard Armauer Hansen, leprosy is primarily a granulomatous disease of the peripheral nerves and mucosa of the upper respiratory tract; skin lesions...
research center at a remote location in the Atlas Mountains
Atlas Mountains
The Atlas Mountains is a mountain range across a northern stretch of Africa extending about through Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. The highest peak is Toubkal, with an elevation of in southwestern Morocco. The Atlas ranges separate the Mediterranean and Atlantic coastlines from the Sahara Desert...
. 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
Lobotomy
Lobotomy "; τομή – tomē: "cut/slice") is a neurosurgical procedure, a form of psychosurgery, also known as a leukotomy or leucotomy . It consists of cutting the connections to and from the prefrontal cortex, the anterior part of the frontal lobes of the brain...
. 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.
Hilary Craven successfully passes herself as Betterton's wife Olive, because he is miserable and wants desperately to escape. She falls in love with Andrew Peters, a handsome young American who was in the group with her on their journey to the facility. Through clues she has left along the way, Jessop eventually locates and rescues her and the others held there, with help from Peters, who turns out also to be a secret agent and the cousin of Betterton's first wife Elsa, whom Betterton had murdered. Betterton is arrested, Craven no longer wants to die, and she and Peters are free to begin their life together.
Characters
- Mr. Jessop, a British security agent
- Thomas Betterton, a young scientist who has recently disappeared
- Olive Betterton, his wife who wishes to join him
- Boris Glydr, the Polish cousin of Thomas Betterton's first wife Elsa
- Hilary Craven, a woman with nothing to lose
- Mrs. Calvin Baker, a typical American tourist
- Janet Hetherington, a dour English traveler
- Henri Laurier, a gallant Frenchman
- Mr. Aristides, one of the world's wealthiest men
- Andrew Peters, a young research chemist
- Torquil Ericsson, a Norwegian idealist
- Dr. Louis Barron, a Frenchman dedicated to bacteriological research
- Helga Needheim, an arrogant scientist
- Paul Van Heidem, a geneal
- Mr. LeBlanc, a French investigator
Major themes
This book explores the 1950s subject of defection to the Soviets, but it also demonstrates how the breakup of Christie's first marriage in the 1920s remained with her. Like her 1934 Mary Westmacott novel Unfinished PortraitUnfinished Portrait (novel)
Unfinished Portrait is a semi-autobiographical novel written by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by William Collins & Sons in March 1934 and in the US by Doubleday later in the same year. The British edition retailed for seven shillings and sixpence and the US edition at $2.00...
, it starts with a youngish woman who has married, had a daughter and whose husband has replaced her with someone else. In both books, a young man displays remarkable perceptiveness in spotting her intention to end her life and defies convention to save her, not only in tackling a stranger on intimate matters but in spending time in the woman's hotel bedroom to talk her out of suicide. In this story he talks her into espionage instead.
Literary significance and reception
The Times Literary SupplementThe Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement is a weekly literary review published in London by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation.-History:...
in its review, written by Philip John Stead, of November 19, 1954, was enthusiastic when it asked, "Where do scientists go when they vanish from the ken of the Security Services? A solution to this fascinating problem is propounded in Destination Unknown. While it must be admitted that the secret, when disclosed, smacks rather of The Thousand and One Nights than of modern international rivalry for scientific talents, it may surely be excused on the ground that it provides Mrs. Christie with a story-tellers holiday from the rigours of detective fiction. Readers may regret the absence of the tonic logicalities of crime's unravelling - though "clues" are not altogether missing - for the secret service story belongs largely to Adventure, but in their place is the author's obvious pleasure in the wider horizons of the more romantic genre." The review concluded, "However much the purist yearns for Poirot or Miss Marple, he can hardly deplore Mrs. Christie's bright, busy excursion into this topical and extravagant sphere."
Maurice Richardson of The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
of October 31, 1954, said, "The thriller is not Agatha Christie's forte; it makes her go all breathless and naïve." He concluded, "Needs to be read indulgently in a very comfortable railway carriage. She probably had a delicious busman's holiday writing it."
Robert Barnard
Robert Barnard
Robert Barnard is an English crime writer, critic and lecturer.- Life and work :Born in Essex, Barnard was educated at the Colchester Royal Grammar School and at Balliol College in Oxford....
wrote, "Slightly above-average thriller, with excellent beginning (heroine, whose husband has left her for another woman, and whose small daughter had died, contemplates suicide in strange hotel). Thereafter topples over into hokum, with a notably unexciting climax. Mainly concerns disappearing scientists – it is written in the wake of the Fuchs/Pontecorvo affairs. Mentions the un-American Activities Committee, without obvious disapproval."
Publication history
- 1954, Collins Crime Club (London), November 1, 1954, Hardback, 192 pp
- 1955, Dodd Mead and Company (New York), 1955, Hardback, 212 pp
- 1956, Pocket BooksPocket BooksPocket Books is a division of Simon & Schuster that primarily publishes paperback books.- History :Pocket produced the first mass-market, pocket-sized paperback books in America in early 1939 and revolutionized the publishing industry...
(New York), Paperback, 183 pp - 1958, Fontana Books (Imprint of HarperCollinsHarperCollinsHarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...
), Paperback, 191 pp - 1969, Ulverscroft Large-print Edition, Hardcover, 203 pp
- 1977, Greenway edition of collected works (William Collins), Hardcover, 196 pp ISBN 0-00-231089-9
- 1978, Greenway edition of collected works (Dodd Mead), Hardcover, 196 pp
In the UK the novel was first serialised in the weekly magazine John Bull
John Bull (magazine)
John Bull Magazine was a weekly periodical established in the City, London EC4, by Theodore Hook in 1820.-Publication dates:It was a popular periodical that continued in production through 1824 and at least until 1957...
in five abridged instalments from September 25 (Volume 96, Number 2517) to October 23, 1954 (Volume 96, Number 2521) with illustrations by William Little.
The novel was first serialised in the US in the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
in fifty-one parts from Tuesday, April 12 to Thursday June 9, 1955 under the title of Destination X.
External links
- Destination Unknown at the official Agatha Christie website