Where Have All the Scientists Gone?: Destination Unknown | 1954

(image from here)

"To Hilary it all had an unreal quality. It was as though she was still in a dream, mercifully protected from contact with reality. This was only a delay, only a matter of waiting. She was still on her journey - her journey of escape. She was still getting away from it all, still going towards that spot where her life would start again." -Destination Unknown, p. 27

The Sum of It:
We return for this week's second read to Caper-town aka one of those times when Agatha decided to write about espionage for a change. Destination Unknown (also known as Many Steps to Death) begins with some good old Cold War Era drama: scientists are disappearing from various countries and the British government is afraid they are defecting to the Soviet Union (#yikes). The most recent disappearee is Thomas Betterton. His wife, Olive, is quite distraught about his MIA status and tells the authorities hey can you please help me find my husband? Also, unrelated, my doctor says I'm probably due for a break down soon, so I think I need to hit up the beach so can I peace out? Investigating Official named Jessop says, okay sure, Mrs. Betterton, go have some rest and we will figure out what happened to your husband. Being a smarty, he also thinks that perhaps Olive Betterton knows EXACTLY where her husband has gone off to, and decides maybe he needs a little beach vacay as well...

MEANWHILE, one Hilary Craven is on a flight to Casablanca via Paris, basically on a farewell Europe tour before she plans to commit suicide. Her life has become quite grim due to the death of her young daughter and, shortly thereafter, her husband leaving her for another woman. There is some fog in France, so she gets put on a different flight to Casablanca (ugh, airports...), and is then even further bummed out when she finds out her original flight CRASHED and there were only a few survivors. She checks into a nice hotel in Casablanca, visits several drugstores for a stockpile of sleeping pills, has a nice dinner, and heads to her room to take all the pills. HOWEVER, before she can complete this plan, who bursts into her room but Jessop! He says, listen, I saw you buy all those pills today and I know you're planning to kill yourself. How about instead of taking pills you agree to help me out with some seriously dangerous spy work because you don't really care about being alive so if you die it's all good? Hilary deliberates for a bit, but decides to go along with Jessop's offer because she literally has nothing else to live for.

Jessop needs Hilary to impersonate Olive Betterton BECAUSE Olive was on the original Casablanca flight that crashed and, although she survived, is not expected to live much longer. Hilary goes to Olive's bedside in time to hear some ominous words about a dangerous Boris and a poem about snow before Olive dies. Armed with only these super vague clues, Hilary reads up on Olive's life, undergoes some voluntary surgery to make herself look like she had been in a plane crash, and continues Olive Betterton's trip itinerary. What follows is a wholeeeee lot of, to be frank, confusing and at times pretty boring spy drama involving MORE plane crashes, leper colonies, and hidden scientist colonies seeking to take over the world (uh...not cool, guys.)

The YOA Treatment:
I really adore the premise of this book. For the first few chapters I was really hooked on the idea of a woman abandoning suicide for a truly dangerous spy mission. The set up of this book had a very Agatha-esque feel, and yet it became very muddled in the middle, and failed to really hold my interest by the end. I admire Dame Agatha for expanding beyond her typical murder mystery novel, that, no doubt, had become kind of monotonous for her by this point in her career. And yet...spy novels were not her thing. There are moments when you can see her style peeking out, but the plot lacks that climactic twist ending that you expect when you read her works.

Also of interesting note: Destination Unknown is considered to have influence from real-life scientists defecting to the Soviet Union in the 1950s. You can read about these two men, Bruno Pontecorvo and Klaus Fuchs, and see how their stories parallel aspects of Destination Unknown.

-A.