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heresyourletter's review against another edition
adventurous
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.5
I’m a huge Agatha Christie fan, but this is far from her best work. It had a compelling start, but then the last two-thirds of the book were excruciatingly slow, with an ever-more confusing and implausible plot and too many characters to keep track of.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Xenophobia, Murder, Racism, War, Gun violence, and Colonisation
princess71608's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
manhattanmike's review against another edition
2.0
Just awful! Starts out as a thriller, a bit dated, but acceptable. Then drifts into slightly tedious conversations between new characters over the threat that ‘youth’ presents to the establishment. Then it’s off to Germany to meet a neo-Nazi group manipulating said youth for world domination. After this it’s a series of disconnected rants about the dangerous ‘youth’ involving DeGaulle and other new characters too boring and random to pay attention to.
It’s a page turner, in as much as you skip page after page seeking phrases or names that might return you to the opening promise of the book. Spoiler - someone is shot in the final pages, I think fatally, but the writing is so obtuse I’m not even sure about this.
Presumably a novel the publishers couldn’t refuse to publish, and daren’t confront Dame Agatha about as she’d produced reliable bestsellers for them for decades. Oh dear! Best forgotten about.
It’s a page turner, in as much as you skip page after page seeking phrases or names that might return you to the opening promise of the book. Spoiler - someone is shot in the final pages, I think fatally, but the writing is so obtuse I’m not even sure about this.
Presumably a novel the publishers couldn’t refuse to publish, and daren’t confront Dame Agatha about as she’d produced reliable bestsellers for them for decades. Oh dear! Best forgotten about.
tomasmoreira21_'s review
3.0
During most of the time I've spent reading this book, I really was enjoying the mystery, the foreshadowing, the diplomatic world and somehow the strange and odd plot. The book takes place in the Post-WWII world and we first meet a bored, average diplomat named Stafford Nye, who has a very suspicious encounter with a stranger, a young girl, who persuades him to do her a favor. From the on, we are introduced to the world of spies and so on and Agatha thought of a whole alternative scenario for this post-war period, where wages of rebellious youth, under the influence of talented and twisted-minded speech-makers and leaders, organize manifestations, protests and install chaos in many countries. Aside from that, we have other arcs going on and at the end, everything feels confusing and underdeveloped. It's all about the ideas, because I didn't become attached to the characters and their lives and the little twists and turns the author introduces at the end don't have any impact at all. A lot of potential, but it was a very weak way of inaugurating Agatha Christie's books.
pbraue13's review against another edition
1.0
This book was published on Agatha Christie's 80th birthday and was her 80th book. It hurts me to say it, but in her waining years I think the quality of her writing deteriorated and I am shocked that this book apparently was on the best seller list for six months (at the shock of her family and her publishers too apparently). This book is an aberration in Christie's ouvré as it is not a strict detective novel, but rather a novel of international terrorism and anarchy with a "wrong man" plot that Hitchcock would scoff at. It's a weaker novel that beings with a compelling, albeit somewhat implausible, situation (whereby a man gives a woman his passport out of sympathy??), but it degenerates into total unbelievability long before the end. Only in the closing pages of Chapter 23 where Matilda Cleckheaton (a Miss Marple copy cat, but less fun) unmasks a completely unexpected, totally incredible, and elderly villainess is there a faint trace of the usual Christie magic.
Throughout her life Christie always said she was not interested in politics much, but the entire thrust of this novel is political, with politicians and diplomats meeting regularly and implausibly to maintain political stability. Such discussions and moments are dotted everywhere, but never amount to anything - NOTHING HAPPENS. Most of the conversations, whether private or political, meander aimlessly and most of them/the novel could be entirely cut without making much of a difference.
In Christie's lengthy introduction to this book she discusses where her ideas come from, but the sad irony to this novel is that the ingenious ideas that proliferated in over novels are notable only in their absence in this one. If this was not an Agatha Christie novel I wouldn't have picked it up. I'm guessing that magic name on the cover is what sold this novel to the masses and to the best seller list back then.
1/5 stars
Throughout her life Christie always said she was not interested in politics much, but the entire thrust of this novel is political, with politicians and diplomats meeting regularly and implausibly to maintain political stability. Such discussions and moments are dotted everywhere, but never amount to anything - NOTHING HAPPENS. Most of the conversations, whether private or political, meander aimlessly and most of them/the novel could be entirely cut without making much of a difference.
In Christie's lengthy introduction to this book she discusses where her ideas come from, but the sad irony to this novel is that the ingenious ideas that proliferated in over novels are notable only in their absence in this one. If this was not an Agatha Christie novel I wouldn't have picked it up. I'm guessing that magic name on the cover is what sold this novel to the masses and to the best seller list back then.
1/5 stars
cancermoononhigh's review
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.75
strahinja's review against another edition
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.5
melissa_who_reads's review against another edition
2.0
There is a lot of old people sitting around talking in this one. There are some scenes that are interesting, and a tiny bit of action, but in the end it doesn't really hang together. At all. Sets up main characters, but then doesn't follow them on their journeys to America (North and South) - instead, follows a lot of boring political conferences and old people talking and saying the same thing over and over and over ....
aggressive_nostalgia's review against another edition
I initially tried to read this about two years ago and only made it through a few chapters. Then a few months ago, my roommate gave me a loose synopsis of the climax/twist, and it’s so wacky that I decided to give it another shot, just for kicks. But, Marple have mercy, most of this book is so boring. I had trouble remembering what was going on long enough to follow the plot, because everything was so relentlessly dull. In a month, I made it through about two-thirds of this attention meat grinder and finally had no energy left to feed it.
I’ve never thought highly of Dame Christie’s forays into espionage thrillers, and my experience with Passenger to Frankfurt did absolutely nothing to improve my opinion. I can’t recommend this to anyone. Alas! Two books from the end, my Christie completionist hopes have given up the ghost.
I’ve never thought highly of Dame Christie’s forays into espionage thrillers, and my experience with Passenger to Frankfurt did absolutely nothing to improve my opinion. I can’t recommend this to anyone. Alas! Two books from the end, my Christie completionist hopes have given up the ghost.
vampiresessah's review
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.75
The story just did not work for me. Sadly disappointed by Christie here who usually makes me excited about the characters she weaves and the plot that unravels into a full picture. This one was tough to wrap my mind around.