Not Colonel Mustard did it in the library with a candlestick | Passenger to Frankfurt

Backwards into the Past | Passenger to Frankfurt | Agatha Christie

books:


	• Passenger to Frankfurt Agatha Christie St. Martin's Minotaur, 2003 - 288 pages view larger image
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Book Club Review

Book Club Review
Passenger to Frankfurt
by Agatha Christie

Our book club's book for February 2008 was PASSENGER TO FRANKFURT, by Agatha Christie.

Huh? you may be thinking. And that is exactly why we decided to read this book. We have been reading a lot of books lately by writers who are newer to the field, so we decided we would like to go back to one of the classics. But we wanted to read a lesser-known book by one of the greats. And thus was Passenger to Frankfurt elected. Fortunately, it's in print as a mass-market book, so it was nice and cheap, too!

This isn't a Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, or even Tommy & Tuppence book. Rather, it is Dame Agatha's foray into the world of the thriller, with plenty of espionage, secret identities, and even (it is rumored) the son of Adolf Hitler.

In a nutshell, the plot concerns the main character of Sir Stafford Nye, who awakens after being drugged to realize that his passport has been stolen. He remembers a young woman who'd begged for his help and then disappeared--and then he himself is the victim of a murder attempt. When he does find the young lady, he is dragged into a plot of international proportions, featuring NeoNazis, multiple identities, and secrets and betrayals.

We felt it was interesting to see Christie in this mode. (Interestingly, Christie notes in her preface that she considers the book an "extravaganza," far beyond the scope of her normal books.) In some ways, the characters are ones we have seen before--including Sir Stafford's aunt Matilda, who's a bit Miss Marplesque writ large.

That said, the book is of course filled with Christie's trademark twists and turns. Because the book is a thriller, it's tough to say too much without giving away key points of the plot. It is believable? No, not really--but neither were those Frederick Forsyth or Jack Higgins books, either. (Or Robert Ludlum.) But it's great fun to read, if you can put aside your expectations of the typical Christie book. The men in our group particularly liked the book, which is actually fairly short by thriller standards and can be gotten through in just a sitting or two.

On the negative side, you can't really say that there's any major character development--the good guys are good, the bad are bad (except in cases of false identities, but you'll have to read for yourself to get that all figured out). The plot does seem a bit convoluted at times, but isn't that what we expect from a thriller? Christie must have had a lot of fun writing this--not just solving a "little murder" but rather getting herself up to speed on plots for world domination.

The women were a little less enthusiastic, but overall we did enjoy it and recommend it as a good option for something different and fun. We thought it was Christie's homage to Hitchcock and would have been a great film.

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Not Colonel Mustard did it in the library with a candlestick

This books seem to be failed James Bond type spy mystery with neonazis.
Even the romance is bollixed between the two central upper class English types.
The young Siegfried is a Wagnerian operatic leitmotif that forms a central
plot element. Even the secret weapon is nothing deadly...
She seems to have completely misunderstood the youth movements of the 1960's.

Backwards into the Past

I remnember when this book came out and I, a child at the time, knew something was sadly wrong with Agatha Christie. For years I couldn't look this book in the face. But after reading Laura Thompson's new biography of Christie, in which Thompson writes vigorously of PASSENGER as Christie's late, brilliant modernist masterpiece, I decided to give it another shot. This time I decided to read it backwards, hoping to be able to follow the action a little better if I knew what to look for.

Do you know, it works very well this way!

I remain sympathetic to the complaint of the reader from April 2003 who said that a large group of good guys (none of them the book's three main good characters) trap a pair of the bad guys. You would think that at least one of the main people (Stafford Nye, Matilda or Renata) would show up at the finale in the Scottish highlands but I guess not. I was still shocked out of my wits at the unmasking! And then, reading backwards, I discovered that I had many, many chapters still to go before the other unmasking, when you find out about the big Hitler cult of the golden Siegfried boy from South America! So for an ordinary reader this would come about halfway through the book the other way, and then you'd be treading water while Admiral Blunt met with Mr. Robinson and Mr. Horsham met with Edward Altamount, et cetera, et cetera, lots of conversations, most of them quite grave.

I also realized that at heart PASSENGER is a sort of rewrite of Christie's 1958 play VERDICT, her famous flop play which still holds a special place in my heart. PASSENGER devolves, liek VERDICT, into the story of a refugee woman called Lisa, escaped from Hitler's terror, who becomes the assistant to a great scientist based in the British Isles, and who falls in love with him even though he is fairly distant to her. This sort of Celia Johnson passion must have meant a lot to Christie, and here she gives Lisa (in VERDICT her name was Lisa, too!) the happy ending she was otherwise denied. I had the satisfying sense of a door closing, that perfect click when something unsettled finds its own true way home.

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Hijacking the Plot

While Agatha Christie is best known for her mysteries featuring Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple, she also tried her hand at other stories that weren't straightforward mysteries. Such is the case with "Passenger to Frankfurt", a novel that could more appropriately be termed a thriller, but also one that doesn't quite live up to Dame Christie's usual standards. From the very beginning, the novel has an unusual premise, but as the story progresses, the plot becomes too sidetracked with tangential stories and characters.

Sir Stafford Nye arrives at Frankfurt Airport due to a fog delay; as he sits waiting for his flight back to England, he speaks with a mysterious young woman who has a proposition for him - she needs to get into England unnoticed or she will be killed, and wishes to borrow his passport and cloak. Sir Stafford Nye, wishing for a little adventure, accepts the deal, only to come up against more questions than answers on his return. He seeks out this passenger to try to find out the truth, only to find himself swept up and recruited for some political intrigue. Always game, Sir Stafford Nye agrees to help out this mysterious woman, and his government, to unveil a plot that reeks of world domination.

And that is exactly where the plot of "Passenger to Frankfurt" gets sidetracked: the first portion of the book is excellently crafted and mysterious, a testament to Christie's ability to weave an opening that keeps you in suspense, but the story begins to fall apart after Sir Stafford Nye accepts his new role as a secret agent. The main problem is that these two characters who've been developed so far almost completely disappear from the book, and the reader becomes a third wheel at meetings of important government people as they try to discover the mastermind behind this conspiracy. Instead of her well-crafted and intricately ingenious mysteries, the last half of "Passenger to Frankfurt" lacks almost any intrigue, and reads like a convoluted castoff from the Cold War, with a plot that involves neo-Nazis living in Argentina and striking up the world's youth to invest in total anarchy.

There are some intriguing things that get said along the way: perhaps Christie just bit off more than she could chew with this novel, which reads too often like disparate storylines. The resolution comes too quickly, there is no build up to the epilogue, and very little to tie all of the threads together. I can very easily understand why many people do not like this book, but as a fan of Christie's writing, it is interesting to see her take on a different style.

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Agatha Christie is more than the most popular mystery writer of all time. In a career that spans over half a century, her name is synonymous with brilliant deception, ingenious puzzles, and the surprise denouement. By virtually inventing the modern mystery novel she has earned her title as the Queen of Crime. Curious? Then you're invited to read...

Passenger To Frankfurt

It was an unusual predicament for Sir Stafford Nye-to awaken in a stupor after being drugged, only to find his passport stolen. There was also no trace of the fascinating woman he encountered in Frankfurt who begged him to help save her life. But Sir Stafford's troubles are only just beginning. The target of two murder attempts, he now seeks the help of the stranger who so urgently sought his. If he can locate her. What he finds is a woman of numerous identities and twice as many secrets, who ushers him into the shadows of an international conspiracy that could well prove to be the death of them.

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