I stumbled onto this weird little book when I was in a bit of an Agatha Christie kick. Destination Unknown, which was also published as So Many Steps to Death, is a grandmaster mystery novelist's attempt at a spy thriller. And sadly, though not wholly unexpectedly, it isn't very good.
Imagine Tolkien writing a courtroom drama.
Perhaps the biggest problem with Destination Unknown is that all of the elements of a thriller that draw in readers are done in rather unsatisfying ways. It's mostly chase, with too little catch. The main plot ends abruptly and unsatisfyingly, although right after the "end" of the book is a little surprise you probably won't see coming. There's a lot of brainstorming about an escape plan, and then it's executed completely out of the PoV character's view.
There is some good tension at a few points in the book, but they are too few and far between. The villain is fairly predictable, with a somewhat unique "evil plan."
Like a lot of Christie books, there are a lot of varied characters with interesting personalities, but all the Cold War ideology gibberish is mostly there to befuddle the reader in a way that is appropriate for a murder mystery, but less so for a thriller.
Of course, we are talking about Agatha freakin' Christie here, so the prose is good and descriptive. The pace is slow (again, better for a mystery than a thriller).
The book focuses a lot on the idea of scientific hubris, which is of course a fine topic, but the handling is a little cartoonish. In the video, I talk a bit about my experiences visiting with high-level scientists and the short version is that scientists are frequently regular people, too, and you don't get that feeling from this book.
Grab a copy here, if you want to check it out: https://a.co/d/7JjE32X
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