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A review by pbraue13
Passenger to Frankfurt by Agatha Christie
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