At Frankfurt Airport, a mysterious woman seeks Sir Stafford Nye's aid on a secret mission of the utmost urgency. With his own life in grave danger,...
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Feb 03, 2012
Jessie
rated it: 
Warning! Mild Spoilers!
An insouciant and debonair young diplomat, a beautiful girl in danger, Cold War espionage still raging amidst the turmoil of student unrest, economic volatility and political instability - and that's just chapter one. Throw in a world-wide conspiracy of anarchist youth, a mysterious cabal of business leaders, Adolph Hitler, and a miracle drug and you have "Passenger to Frankfurt."
At first I thought "This is rather dated and not standing More...
An insouciant and debonair young diplomat, a beautiful girl in danger, Cold War espionage still raging amidst the turmoil of student unrest, economic volatility and political instability - and that's just chapter one. Throw in a world-wide conspiracy of anarchist youth, a mysterious cabal of business leaders, Adolph Hitler, and a miracle drug and you have "Passenger to Frankfurt."
At first I thought "This is rather dated and not standing More...
Oct 09, 2011
Peter
rated it: 
"Wow. I hate to say it, but this was terrible. Dear Agatha was really losing it. Laughably, this is subtitled ""an Extraganza"", but it's truly a disaster.
Passenger is one of her thrillers, although the word hardly applies. Set in 1970, it starts out promisingly with unambitious diplomat Sir Stafford Nye accepting a daring proposal from the beautiful and enigmatic Countess Renata in the Frankfort airport. The next 100 pages are engaging as he tries to trac More...
Passenger is one of her thrillers, although the word hardly applies. Set in 1970, it starts out promisingly with unambitious diplomat Sir Stafford Nye accepting a daring proposal from the beautiful and enigmatic Countess Renata in the Frankfort airport. The next 100 pages are engaging as he tries to trac More...
Jan 06, 2011
Laurel
rated it:
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
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Aug 30, 2010
Colleen
rated it:
Weird, weird, weird. You could tell based on the preface and the strange pleading to the reader that this COULD all happen and that Christie had stewed long and hard on this, but really it was her way outside her element. The book is like an old woman's paranoid treatise, so guess mildly interesting just for that odd window to Christie's view of 1970.
I kind of skipped thru the Benvo part, because it didn't really make sense and was a terrible idea. Then the revelation of Juanita (wh More...
I kind of skipped thru the Benvo part, because it didn't really make sense and was a terrible idea. Then the revelation of Juanita (wh More...
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Feb 15, 2010
Kristopher
rated it: 
This was evidently somewhat out of Christie's genre--this was not localized mystery, but international espionage--and a poor introduction to her work, at that. I'll give her another chance some time, particularly as she had a finely honed quality which lingered between literary and contemporary. This was something like a very old woman's parting thoughts on the wildness of the times (see 71, 74-75, 140), and it was practically a satire. I had thought that her later work might be more refined. On
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Aug 20, 2011
Texbritreader
rated it:
A Cold War spy thriller/mystery from Agatha Christie and a perfect example of the author at her worst. After a far fetched but decent opening gambit, the first part of the novel descends to a catalog of the trouble with "young people" circa 1970, and a lot of improbable conspiracy theories about what was behind then current political and social movements. Christie was clearly at odds with the values and ideas of the era and it infects her book with a strange, paranoid flavor that see
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Sep 21, 2010
Anna
rated it:
I read all Agatha Christies in my local library by the time I was 12, and then didn't touch them for a very long time again. Now it's been one or two a year, but this is the first non-classical Christie I remember reading.
Nor a murder story but a thriller. I guess a thriller? The era for writing them was perfect, however Christie is a bit unusual in thrillers. Much dialogue and talk over dinner tables and details on who's wearing what and who knows whom. If only Christie had read a few Lud More...
Nor a murder story but a thriller. I guess a thriller? The era for writing them was perfect, however Christie is a bit unusual in thrillers. Much dialogue and talk over dinner tables and details on who's wearing what and who knows whom. If only Christie had read a few Lud More...
Sep 01, 2011
Jean
rated it:
This book by Agatha Christie was different from the murder mysteries. It was written in 1970 and reminded me of Buchan's "Thirty-nine Steps", in that it was an adventure story where the aims of the people involved were unclear to me, and therefore fairly meaningless. The best part of the book was the quotation by Jan Smuts preceding the story: "Leadership, besides being a great creative force, can be diabolical..." I thought that this quotation could be applied to quite a few
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Jan 23, 2009
Bettie
rated it:
When a bored diplomat is approached in a bleak airport by a woman whose life is in danger, he agrees in a moment of weakness to lend her his passport and boarding ticket. Suddenly, Stafford Nye's own life is on the line, for he 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 More...
Jul 27, 2009
Elizabeth
rated it:
Super, super weird, even for a Christie novel. For one: no mystery, just a bizarrely convoluted story of international 70s-style intrigue involving a well-born British guy who likes wearing capes, a nefarious plot to get students to overthrow all governments, Wagner's Ring symbolism, an evil Nazi blonde hunk, and (spoiler!) Hitler living a secret life in Argentina where I guess nobody recognizes him in even one instance over the course of 30 years. Oh, and a wedding at the end! (I won't say who,
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Jan 26, 2012
Narrelle
rated it:
Christie attempts a James Bond style story, complete with outré villains and globe trotting protagonists. It's almost spec fic with its near-future revolutions and social engineering.
Sadly, it's overblown, vague waffle predicated on a premise of OMG YOUNG PEOPLE! and I BLAME NAZIS!! Most characters speak in almost the same voice, though Aunt Matilda and Stafford Nye manage to rise above the general mess. The villains may be outré but that's no substitute for actual characterisation.
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Sadly, it's overblown, vague waffle predicated on a premise of OMG YOUNG PEOPLE! and I BLAME NAZIS!! Most characters speak in almost the same voice, though Aunt Matilda and Stafford Nye manage to rise above the general mess. The villains may be outré but that's no substitute for actual characterisation.
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Jun 23, 2009
Phayvanh
rated it:
This is the reason Madame Christie isn't known for her political intrigue novels. There is no suspense here. But not because she has no plot. But because she has no idea how international spies talk or act or think. Their conversations do not amount to anything. For this reason alone, the book sucks.
I got half way through before I realized that Christie was figuring out the story on the page. None of the original details that support her best works, none of the mind boggling t More...
I got half way through before I realized that Christie was figuring out the story on the page. None of the original details that support her best works, none of the mind boggling t More...
Jun 21, 2010
Colin
rated it: 
This is not a standard Agatha Christie, it is probably more a modern thriller type book. The main thing I have noticed is that is weird/chaotic. Some narrative sections have the characters talking about something you have little knowledge of. However this just adds to the overall mystery. My favorite passage is a poem
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Boys and Girls come out to play,
The moon doth shine as bright as day,
Leave you supper and leave your sleep,
And shoot your playfellow in the street,
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Jan 28, 2012
Paul
rated it:
Passenger to Frankfurt is not what many readers might expect from an Agatha Christie novel; it is not a whodunit, and Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple are nowhere to be found. Rather, Passenger to Frankfurt is a spy novel whose main character, a British diplomat named Sir Stafford Nye, impulsively helps a mysterious woman at Frankfurt Airport by giving her his passport and cloak, and is thereby plunged into the proverbial web of intrigue and deception. At times, Passenger to Frankfurt seems like
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Jul 18, 2011
Hal
rated it:
The interesting story in this thriller seems to be happening somewhere else, always in locations the reader or characters are not. The major problem with the plot is that events that move the story along rarely occur in the scenes where the point-of-view character is, with the exception of the meeting of "The Passenger" and some parts near the end. Hearing about how the world is coming to pieces through pretentious characters that are sitting in comfortable sofas smoking pipes does not
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Jan 09, 2011
Laura
rated it:
For all of the action and compelling plot twists--espionage and intrigue, Hitler's secret son, the rise of a new Third Reich--this was really a dull book. There were so many characters, and rather than get the action straight out, Christie had these many characters summarizing the action that had been done by the other many characters. The only perk was that, listening to the story narrated by Hugh Fraser, I noticed that one of Fraser's European characters came out sounding very much like his Po
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Aug 18, 2010
Philip
rated it:
Christie had written some other 'international thrillers' during her career (N OR M? DESTINATION UNKNOWN) and it was generally considered that it was not a genre in which she excelled. PASSENGER TO FRANKFURT was no exception, but as it was released to coincide with Dame Agatha's 80th birthday, and was heavily promoted as her '80th Book' (which took a lot of fancy calculating), it received somewhat more attention than the usual "Christie For Christmas." It sold extremely well, exceedi
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Sep 24, 2009
Irene J.
rated it:
Awal buku ini cukup di luar dugaan. Berbeda sekali dengan tipikal buku-buku yang selama ini dia tulis. Di buku ini, sepertinya Christie keluar dari gayanya yang banyak kita ketahui. Pandangannya tentang pergolakan politik dunia di masa itu, sangat dikedepankan. Tentu, masing dengan "tarikan" yang sama. Berangkat dari kisah misteri, seputar agen rahasia (tema ini sudah pernah dijadikan sentral dalam beberapa novelnya yang lain) dan intrik.
Tapi, kisah kemudian melebar, tak h More...
Tapi, kisah kemudian melebar, tak h More...
Aug 14, 2010
Meave
rated it:
Benvo the miracle drug? Hitler Jr. who has perfect pitch? And Aggie using--and no one stopping her from using--this expression in 1970.
It makes no sense and it's not even funny. At least Hallowe'en Party had a good joke about "lumpy" vs. "sexy." This was an embarrassing, overambitious mess. One star because I swear they only published it out of greed.
It makes no sense and it's not even funny. At least Hallowe'en Party had a good joke about "lumpy" vs. "sexy." This was an embarrassing, overambitious mess. One star because I swear they only published it out of greed.
Mar 18, 2011
Deborah
rated it:
I was drawn in after the first chapter, and stayed interested throughout. I did not want to put this book down. Having never read Agatha Christie before, I wasn't expecting anything in particular, but I thought the pacing was good, the characters weird and interesting, and just wanted to find out what they would get themselves into. Also the musical and political allusions kept it interesting and mysterious.
Dec 13, 2011
Melby
rated it:
Wow, people really do not like this book! Agatha Christie novels are meant to be light entertaining reads, as far as I'm concerned at least, and this didn't disappoint. Okay, it wasn't as light as her usual, but so what? It was an interesting premise and it certainly held my interest and curiosity throughout. Lighten up, folks, and just enjoy the unique read!
Dec 22, 2011
I love books like this because i really like mystery books. Agatha Christie is a very good mystery writer. The Passenger to Frankfurt is a book basically is a story about a woman who needs Sir Stanford Nye's help to uncover a so called conspiracy of world domination. If you like like mystery thrillers read this series.
May 24, 2011
Becky
rated it:
An uncharacteristically poor offering for Agatha Christie. She tries here to create a story of political intrigue and world turmoil. However, the characters who should tie the plot together are poorly developed and I kept losing track of them in the lengthy political ramblings. It was a struggle to see this one to the end.
Feb 24, 2009
Heidi
rated it:
Pretty random. Maybe I'm just not cultured enough, but I didn't really get it. It did manage to hold my attention; her ideas on youth politics and mob politics were interesting. Until the end of the book I wasn't really sure what the mystery was - and am still not sure what the fuzzy panda has to do with anything.
Jan 22, 2009
Joanna
rated it:
A great start, but it trails into disappointing territory - and this is coming from someone who really likes the political thriller/mysteries (Man in the Brown Suit, Destination Unknown) just as much as the traditional Poirot/Miss Marple/etc. stories. By far my least favorite of Agatha Christie's.
Mar 22, 2010
Dorinda
rated it:
Not as easy to get through as "Then There Were None" and I thought there were a lot of loose ends at the conclusion of the book, left me kind of wondering what happened to ...? Not a typical Agatha Christie mystery, more political/spy thriller. I think I'll stick to Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot.
Feb 03, 2012
Ms.P
rated it: 
There is a sort of mystery here, but it's more of a conspiracy story. The book takes one all over the world. It's one of my favorite non whodunit Agatha Christie books. It has a great atmosphere, and while the whole idea of the story may be silly to some, I've always loved it.
Sep 26, 2011
Ercsi91
rated it:
Well near the books I read from her this is not about Poirot or Mrs. Marple...even thought I tried it sometimes it was good sometimes it was hmmm...to read it...the old ladies killed me.XD
Also I kinda enjoyed reading about political stuff in it and about our world and how money can control everything. If you like such things and want to meditate about such stuff, I think it would be a good choice.
Also I kinda enjoyed reading about political stuff in it and about our world and how money can control everything. If you like such things and want to meditate about such stuff, I think it would be a good choice.
Jul 04, 2010
Marta
rated it:
I bought that book with the intention of finding more mysterious crimes. Page 20 (no crime...), page 50 (still no crime...), page 100 (come on!! it's time for a crime!!...) Then, I realised that the book that I had in my hands was not the typical one that we can expect from Agatha Christie.
Jul 08, 2011
Ang
rated it:
I was surprised how relevant a mystery novel that was written in the 1970's could be for today. As I was reading I mentally checked off all the troubles in the book with what is going on today. If the craziness was going on back then, it is much more so today.
Has more of a political and moral statement in this book than is usual in her books.
Has more of a political and moral statement in this book than is usual in her books.
