Book #41 of 2024:
Passenger to Frankfurt by Agatha Christie
Author Agatha Christie’s 80th book, published on the occasion of her 80th birthday in 1970, is one of only four of her novels that have never been adapted for television or film. I’ve already read two of the others, Death Comes as the End and Destination Unknown, and found each to be a halfway-decent curiosity. This, in contrast, is an absolute trainwreck.
I’m rating it as highly as two stars solely for my enjoyment of the opening premise: a man waiting for a delayed flight is approached by a stranger in the airport lounge, who notes that they share a striking physical resemblance. She claims she’s being tracked by enemies who want to kill her, and asks if she can borrow his passport and coat and put a drug in his drink. He’ll pass out and be able to claim he was robbed, while she will cut her hair and escape under his credentials. He agrees out of sheer boredom (and because this was several decades pre-9/11, I suppose), and later attempts to track her down again to learn more.
It’s absurd, but charming, and not too far off in tone from the spy thrillers this writer had previously penned. Once the two travelers reconnect, however, everything goes swiftly down into a swirl of conspiratorial nonsense and minimal plot. The protagonist’s new friend and de facto love interest — the story ends with their getting married, despite containing no evidence of romance beforehand and numerous observations that she reminds him of his sister — introduces him to her comrades, who are attempting to stop some nebulous international threat. According to them, all the populist youth movements around the world are secretly run by neo-Nazis, who are planning to bring them together into a global Fourth Reich under a charismatic leader who might be Hitler’s son, born after the führer apparently faked his death in the war (by switching places with a patient at a specialized insane asylum for people who all think that they’re Adolf, of course).
Much of this is delivered to us as feverish exposition rather than relevant action beats or interesting character decisions, and it culminates in the good guys visiting a mad scientist who’s been working on an airborne toxin that will cause its victims to be more benevolent-minded (and therefore resistant to caring about all the silly things kids these days protest over, one presumes). A half-century on, it’s hard not to read Christie’s own reactionary politics into this, but I have to emphasize that it also just fundamentally does not make sense on a basic story level. After a promising start, this title is nothing but a pile-up of kooky ideas that have been poorly shaped into a rough approximation of narrative. The main characters often aren’t even around for what passes as key developments, and the whole business concludes without any particular resolution beyond the reveal of a surprise traitor in the group. It’s a real mess that’s in dire need of a Poirot or a Marple to help sort out the jumble.
[Content warning for gun violence and fatphobia.]
★★☆☆☆
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