From the Bookshelf of Reading the Detectives…

Destination Unknown

Agatha Christie

Start date: November 1, 2021

Finish date: November 30, 2021

Discussion: Group Challenges

Why we're reading this: Another title in our Assorted Christies challenge.
[close] Another title in our Assorted Christies challenge.

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Showing 2 of 171 topics — 7,878 comments total

Group Challenges

* 2026 Challenge
By Susan · 24 posts · 28 views

last updated Oct 17, 2025 02:23AM

* Oct 25: A Murder Is Announced (1950) by Agatha Christie
By Susan · 16 posts · 17 views

last updated Oct 16, 2025 07:31AM

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What Members Thought

Nov 26, 2016 BrokenTune rated it it was ok

Shelves: reviewed

Hilary Craven has lost everything that is dear to her and cannot contemplate life any longer. As she sets out to act on her despair, she is approached with a proposition...

I said it before and I say it again: Dame Agatha did not write good spy thrillers. This another proof of it. Although, Destination Unknown was not as outrageously bad as Passenger to Frankfurt - I mean really, not many books are as bad as that - this one was quite boring.

Maybe it was because the story was too slow paced, or ma ...more

36 likes · Like · see review

Oct 22, 2021 Jill rated it really liked it

Shelves: agatha-christie

Hilary Craven is a woman who feels her life is no longer worth living, as her child has died and her husband has left her for another woman. On gathering the means to end her life, she is approached by a Mr Jessop, who is part of the secret service. By using her reason of suicide, he is able to talk into becoming a spy, and to take on the personality of a scientist's wife who is dying having been the victim of a plane crash. Hilary agrees to do this and from then poses as a Mrs Olive Betterton, ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Jun 27, 2015 Doris rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, suspense, z-2015-challenge

This is another novel that I perceive as being the product of a much more naive time: I don't think that a similar novel written today would have had the heroine escaping quite so easily.

At the risk of being spoiler-ish, I must say, though, that I didn't expect the purported hero to be a villain. ...more

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Jan 25, 2021 John Frankham rated it really liked it

Shelves: crime-detective

One of Agatha Christie’s thrillers rather than whodunnits. A good, page-turning plot, with twists and turns which are plausible and surprising. Most enjoyable.

The GR blurb:

‘ In Agatha Christie’s gripping international thriller Destination Unknown, a woman at the end of her rope chooses a more exciting way to die when she embarks upon an almost certain suicide mission to find a missing scientist.

When a number of leading scientists disappear without a trace, concern grows within the international ...more

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