Destination Unknown.

CHRISTIE, Agatha.

$9,500.00

Item Number: 146509

London: The Crime Club by Collins, 1954.

First edition of Christie’s classic spy novel set in Morocco and the Atlas Mountains of Maghreb. Octavo, original cloth. Association copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper in the year of publication, “To Stephen [Glanville] with love from Agatha.” The recipient, Stephen Glanville was an English historian and professor of Egyptology at University College, London. He was close friends with Agatha Christie‘s second husband, Max Mallowan, a fellow archaeologist and comrade-in-arms during World War II. Glanville was acknowledged by Christie to have been the inspiration for two of her works: ‘Death Comes As the End’ and ‘Akhnaton,’ both set in ancient Egypt. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket. Housed in a custom full morocco slipcase with chemise by M.J. Adjarian. An exceptional association.

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 the wife of Thomas Betterton, a nuclear scientist who has disappeared and may have defected to the Soviet Union. Soon she finds herself in a group of oddly-assorted travelers being transported to the unknown destination of the title which turns out to be a secret scientific research facility disguised as a modern leper colony and medical research center at a remote location in the Atlas Mountains. Destination Unknown is one of the five Christie novels to have not received an adaptation of any kind, the others being Death Comes as the End, Passenger to Frankfurt, They Came to Baghdad, and Postern of Fate.