Destination Unknown

Leading scientists have been vanishing, and the intelligence services cannot tell whether they are being abducted, bought or persuaded. The one person who might explain it, Olive Betterton, is dying in hospital after a plane crash in Morocco. In a Casablanca hotel room, meanwhile, Hilary Craven has decided to end her own life, until a stranger proposes a far more interesting way to risk it. Agatha Christie steps away from the drawing-room murder here for a Cold War espionage story, sending an ordinary woman into a situation where survival depends on sustaining a lie. The tone sits closer to her thriller novels than to the Poirot canon. Worth a mention: • A standalone Christie thriller rather than a detective puzzle • Cold War premise involving missing scientists and shifting allegiances • Moroccan and North African settings • Features a reluctant civilian protagonist working under an assumed identity For readers of vintage espionage fiction and Christie's wider catalogue, stocked at Boipoka.