Review: PASSENGER TO FRANKFURT, Agatha Christie

• 
  this edition a large print one published in 2012 by Harper Collins Publishers
• novel first published 1970
  
• ISBN 978-1-4448-0305-1
• 357 pages
  

Synopsis (Agatha Christie fandom)

Sir Stafford Nye's flight home from Malaya takes an unexpected twist when the bored diplomat is approached in an airport by a woman whose life is in danger, he agrees to lend her his passport and boarding ticket. Suddenly, Stafford has unwittingly entered a web of international intrigue, from which the only escape is to outwit the power-crazed Countess von Waldsausen who is hell-bent on world domination through the manipulation and arming of the planet's youth, which brings with it what promises to be a resurgence of Nazi domination. Unwittingly the diplomat has put his own life on the line; when he meets the mystery woman again she is a different person and he finds himself drawn into a battle against an invisible and altogether more dangerous enemy.

My Take

I was so conscious that my U3A Agatha Christie reading group might make heavy weather of this novel that I wrote them some guidelines for their reading:

I am very conscious that you won't find PASSENGER TO FRANKFURT the easiest book to read but please persist.

Passenger to Frankfurt: An Extravanganza is a spy novel by Agatha Christie first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in September 1970 and in the US later in the same year.

It was published to mark Christie's eightieth birthday and, by counting up both UK and US short-story collections to reach the desired total, was also advertised as her eightieth book. It is the last of her spy novels. 

Plot Summary (from Agatha Christie fandom)
Sir Stafford Nye's flight home from Malaya takes an unexpected twist when the bored diplomat is approached in an airport by a woman whose life is in danger, he agrees to lend her his passport and boarding ticket. Suddenly, Stafford has unwittingly entered a web of international intrigue, from which the only escape is to outwit the power-crazed Countess von Waldsausen who is hell-bent on world domination through the manipulation and arming of the planet's youth, which brings with it what promises to be a resurgence of Nazi domination. Unwittingly the diplomat has put his own life on the line; when he meets the mystery woman again she is a different person and he finds himself drawn into a battle against an invisible and altogether more dangerous enemy.

There is more detail and a list of characters at https://agathachristie.fandom.com/wiki/Passenger_to_Frankfurt but you may not want to look at that until after you've finished reading it and after you've made your own notes.

So, in reading it, I suggest you make your own notes and try to think about the following questions

• think about Christie the social commentator: what is she observing happening in the world (in the 1950s and 1960s)?
• think of the world events that are described in various chapters as snapshots from television news reels. Make a list of some of them
• Make a list of the world problems that Christie identifies.
• What does the Young Siegfried symbolise? Who is he?
• What does the young woman to whom Sir Stafford Nye lends his cloak at Frankfurt airport carry into England?
• Where and when did Christie make this sort of commentary before?
• What does this novel have in common with one that we read earlier, DESTINATION UNKNOWN?
• Make a list of your own questions and comments not covered by mine

This novel had a very mixed reception. Can you understand why? Is it a satire or are we meant to take it seriously?

I read this novel nearly 10 years ago and really didn't give it much credit then and gave it a rating of 2.0

Today I am feeling a bit more kindly to it, but have still only given it 3.5 and I feel there is a certain clumsiness about it and I don't think it was a style she was suited to.

See my list of Agatha Christie novels.