Destination Unknown is a work of spy fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 1 November 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)

Maurice Richardson of The Observer of 31 October 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." Barnard refers to Bruno Pontecorvo, a pioneering nuclear scientist who worked with the Allies in World War II then defected to the Soviet Union in 1950 and Klaus Fuchs, theoretical physicist who was also in Los Alamos during World War II, but sent secret knowledge to the Soviet Union and went to prison for that in 1950.

Publication history

  • 1954, Collins Crime Club (London), 1 November 1954, Hardback, 192 pp
  • 1955, Dodd Mead and Company (New York), 1955, Hardback, 212 pp
  • 1956, Pocket Books (New York), Paperback, 183 pp
  • 1958, Fontana Books (Imprint of HarperCollins), Paperback, 191 pp
  • 1969, Ulverscroft Large-print Edition, Hardcover, 203 pp
  • 1977, Greenway edition of collected works (William Collins), Hardcover, 196 pp
  • 1978, Greenway edition of collected works (Dodd Mead), Hardcover, 196 pp
  • May 1983, Pocket Books, paperback, 237 pp,

In the UK the novel was first serialised in the weekly magazine John Bull in five abridged instalments from 25 September (Volume 96, Number 2517) to 23 October 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, 12 April to Thursday 9 June 1955 under the title of Destination X.

References

  • Destination Unknown at the official Agatha Christie website