One of Dame Agatha's spy novels, reflecting the 1950s fears of defections to Russia among the scientific elite. It is very cloak and dagger, with numerous plots, a wealthy backer, a hidden lair in Northern Africa, lavish laboratories and a gilded prison for the defectors. Everything the budding evil genius requires.
Hillary Craven has gone to Casablanca to either find peace or rest in peace. Her ex-husband has remarried and her daughter is dead. Deciding that she has no reason to go on, she buys as many sleeping pills as she can and prepares to swallow them. Imagine her surprise when an English espionage agent interrupts her and offers a slightly more complicated way to commit suicide: impersonate the wife of a scientist who defected. Hillary is strangely drawn to the idea and transitions to her new identity, Olive Betterton. A new life, full of surprises begins at once. She reminds me of Victoria Jones, a Christie heroine from They Came to Baghdad. Both women end up in difficult situations in very foreign surroundings and relay on their wits and acting ability to see their way through.
I completely believed in Hillary's despair in the initial chapters. I would venture a guess that Christie channeled the emotions that she experienced when her first husband left her for another woman. At that time, she went off the rails for ten days, abandoning her car and checking into a posh hotel under the other woman's name. Pretty dramatic stuff.
This is an elaborate confection by a talented writer. In other hands it would seem frivolous, but with Christie's steady hand, it becomes quite entertaining. Espionage may not have been her strong suit, but it obviously intrigued her enough to write several of these thrillers.
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