Book Review 19
Passenger To Frankfurt
By Agatha Christie
A middle-aged diplomat is accosted in an airport lounge and his identity stolen . . .
Sir Stafford Nye’s journey home from Malaya to London takes an unexpected twist in the passenger lounges at Frankfurt - a young woman confides in him that someone is trying to kill her.
Yet their paths are to cross again and again - and each time the mystery woman is introduced as a different person. Equally at home in any guise in any society she draws Sir Stafford into a game of political intrigue more dangerous than he could possibly imagine.
In an arena where no-one can be sure of anyone, Nye must do battle with a well-armed, well-financed, well-trained - and invisible - enemy
Until this year I believed I had read all of AC's books. However, I have discovered that I haven't. Firstly, there's a book that J came across that neither of us had read and then I discovered this book, which I had put into my 'AC 2024 TBR' folder. It was only when I started it that I realised I hadn't read this book.
It was written in 1970 and is one of AC's last books; in fact it is her last non-HP/MM/T&T book. She died in 1976. It is also a book that is quite unlike any other Agatha Christie book I have read. It's not a detective book as such, it's more of a spy novel that delves into politics and drugs and arms and 'the money 'men' and also conspiracy theories, such as Hitler didn't die in the bunker, a look-alike did. And it has a very small element of romance too.
As with all of her books, it is well written and readable and had some intriguing and interesting characters who came over as real. However, for me it wasn't as page-turning, readable as her other books. It was a step outside of her usual comfort zone and I felt that came across somewhat. However, whether that was because it was outside of my Agatha Christie comfort zone or hers, I can't really say. Being honest, I think it was more 'me' than AC. It wasn't really what I was expecting from an AC book - even though caffyolay who read the book before I did had told me it was quite different.
One thing that rather surprised and shook me was that there were a lot of things going on in the book to do with the young people of the day and to an extent politics that in many ways is the same as what is happening today - half a century later. That is rather chilling.
I made a note of two of the paragraphs that portrayed this most of all:
The first one is when Sir Stafford is visiting his elderly aunt. She says to him:
They’ve recruited a service of their own and the danger about that is that it’s a service of young people. And the kind of people who will go anywhere, do anything, unfortunately believe anything, and so long as they are promised a certain amount of pulling down, wrecking, throwing spanners in the works, then they think the cause must be a good one and that the world will be a different place. They’re not creative, that’s the trouble-only destructive. The creative young write poems, write books, probably compose music, paint pictures just as they always have done. They’ll be all right-But once people learn to love destruction for its own sake, evil leadership gets its chance.’
The second is close to the end of the book and is said by a character who was a well known English Lord, who had been with the Foreign Office at some point during his career.
The natural idealism of youth is fed more and more by a desire to destroy those two phases of modern life, injustice and crass materialism. That desire to destroy what is evil, sometimes leads to a love of destruction for its own sake. It can lead to a pleasure in violence and in the infliction of pain.
Both of those paragraphs could have been written today. As I said, I find that rather chilling and scary.
Overall I didn't dislike the book, but nor did I love it. I liked it; it was satisfying; it had a solid beginning, middle and end. It didn't resolve everything, but spy novels rarely do, because of the nature of 'spying'. It isn't a book I would recommend, certainly not as a 'this is a good example of Agatha Christie's work'. However, it was a fair enough read and an interesting one, as well as being fascinating for me to see AC outside of her 'usual' genre. I don't rate books, but if I did this would get a solid three stars.
Agatha Christie 05/12