Physical description
Book, hard cover, 12 sections, sewn with end papers, 210 pages, titled "Destination unknown", written by Agatha Christie, published by The Crime Club, 1954.
Has the stamp of the Footscray Tramway Library, asking it to be returned within 14 days inside the front cover and in many places throughout the book, along with Number "606" on the inside front cover and on the spine of the book. The book was part of a library run by the depot staff to provide materials during broken shifts and to take home.
From Wikipedia - accessed 26/12/2019:
Plot summary
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 travellers being transported to the unknown destination of the title.
The destination 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. The scientists are well-treated, but they are not allowed to leave the facility, and they are locked in secret areas deep inside the mountain whenever government officials and other outsiders visit. Hilary Craven successfully passes herself as Betterton's wife Olive, because he is miserable and wants desperately to escape.
Hilary discovers that the facility was built by the fabulously wealthy and somewhat villainous Mr Aristides, for financial rather than political ends. He has lured the world's best young scientists to it with various deceptions so that he can later sell their services back to the world's governments and corporations for a huge profit. She falls in love with Andrew Peters, a handsome young American who was in the group with her on their journey to the facility.
With the help of clues she has left along the way, Jessop eventually locates and rescues her and the others held there. Peters turns out also to be on a mission, intent on bringing Betterton to justice for the murder of his first wife. Betterton, revealed to also be a scientific fraud who plagiarized his work, is arrested. Hilary no longer wants to die, and she and Peters are free to begin their life together.
Inscriptions & markings
On the top of the first page "13/3" indicating the price, "m/arz"? on the bottom left hand corner and inside the front cover the label of "Robertson & Mullens Ltd" booksellers.
