This is only the second spy thriller that I have read (the other one being "The 39 Steps") and I neither have much experience with this genre, nor am I particularly interested in it. I only read this because it was written by Agatha Christie. And well, I really enjoyed it!

Hilary Craven has nothing to live for as her daughter has died and her husband has left her, when she is recruited by the secret service and agrees to impersonate the wife of a brilliant scientist who has vanished, as have several other scientists recently. The book was written in 1954 and it is firmly set in its time against the backdrop of the Cold War. Soon Hilary is off to Morocco and the adventure unfolds.

Of course most of the story is rather improbable, but reading it was gripping and fun and I read it almost in one sitting. ( )

I started to listen to this (2011) and remembered that I had read this a long time ago.

Olive's husband disappears from Paris, and as a scientist just after the war, his disappearance makes people nervous. Olive travels to Morrocco to escape things, but ends up fatally injured in a plane crash,

Meanwhile Hilary Cravern sits in a hotel room planning her suicide after her daughter has died and her husband has left her. As she has a passing resemblance to Olive (Same height and age, red coloured hair) she is persuaded to embark on a probable suicide mission to find out where all these scientists have disappeared to.

]Much of the book is spent then in covering Hilary's journey and the corresponding search for her in the wide expanse of North Africa

Audible version read by Emilia Fox, who performed a satisfactory role, though her American was a little less jarring than her European accents ( )

Agatha Christie ventures out of her usual Poirot or Marple mystery to reveal kidnapped scientists working in an unknown destination. The story reads like a spy novel with clandestine meetings and locations. Hilary Craven has lost her daughter and her husband and now contemplates suicide. But a British secret agent stops Hilary and urges her to join his group. Hilary Craven becomes Olive Betterton, the wife of one of the missing scientists. The scientists have converged at a location possibly in Africa to discover medical secrets for an extremely rich man. All comforts follow these scientists, except freedom. Thomas Betterton, one of the scientists, cannot function under this controlled atmosphere. His productivity falls. What will happen to him? A very intriguing idea! Agatha Christie presents a very dramatic story. ( )

One woman's husband is missing and she insists she doesn't know where he has gone; another woman's husband has left her and she thinks she has no more reason to live. Their paths cross in the midst of an investigation into missing scientists, secret identities, and treason.

This entry in Christie's bibliography is different from anything else I've read by her. No whip-smart detectives, not locked room murder mysteries; instead it reads more like a wartime spy novel. There are still plenty of Christie-like twists, and I enjoyed it a great deal. ( )

This is quite different from some other Agatha books. But unlike some of her books about spying and international criminal, this one is actually really enjoyable. I like the whole promise and actually think it could make a really good movie! ( )