Passagier voor Frankfurt

Inhoud

De diplomaat sir Stafford Nye neemt een enorm risico als hij zomaar, zonder meer, zijn opvallende jas en zijn paspoort afstaat aan een jonge vrouw die oppervlakkig op hem lijkt. Maar de vrouw is wanhopig en zegt dat het van levensbelang is dat ze zijn plaats inneemt in het vliegtuig van Frankfurt naar Londen. Dat ze niet overdreef begrijpt hij pas later, als hij hoort wie ze is en wat ze probeert te doen.

Bespreking

A terrible mess

At the Frankfurt airport the diplomat Sir Stafford Nye takes an enormous risk when he gives, without questions, his flamboyant cloak and his passport to a young woman who slightly resembles himself. But the woman is desperate and tells him that it truly is a matter of life and death. She must take a seat in the airplane from Frankfurt to London and no one must know who she really is, because that would mean certain death. Later he understands that she did not exaggerate a bit when he learns who she is and what her real purpose was.

Passenger to Frankfurt has nothing to recommend it; except for the study it provides of an author in declining years trying to concoct a plot that involves topics like world domination and fascism. The novel subsequently stays always one pace removed from reality and the characters seem to be as lost as any reader would be.

Agatha Christie wrote this book as a birthday treat in 1970, the year she became eighty. Fans deserved a somewhat nicer present, I think. Even the publisher realized that the story would be hard to sell to the readers and insisted on the subtitle "An Extravaganza".