Get Off My Lawn: Passenger to Frankfurt | 1970

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"And the kind of people who will go anywhere, do anything, unfortunately believe anything, and so long as they are promised a certain amount of pulling down, wrecking, throwing spanners in the works, then they think the cause must be a good one and that the world will be a different place. They're not creative, that's the trouble -- only destructive. The creative young write poems, write books, probably compose music, paint pictures just as they always have done. They'll be all right -- But once people learn to love destruction for its own sake, evil leadership gets its chance." - Passenger to Frankfurt, p. 55

Good heavens, this one is a doozy. Shall do my best here. 

The Sum of It:

The book begins with Sir Stafford Nye, a rather unlauded member of the aristocracy and diplomatic service, having a beer at the airport on his way back to England from Malay. He's approached by a tall girl with an aquiline nose in the bar who quickly tells him she's in danger and asks to borrow his rather dramatic hooded cloak. And his passport. Deal is, she thinks she can pass as him and take his seat on a  plane to England, and if she doesn't, probably someone is going to kill her because her previous flight to Frankfurt has been cancelled. Sir Stafford is game enough to "wander off" and buy his niece a stuffed panda, allowing the stranger to drug his beer and steal his clothes and documents. When he wakes up a bit later following the sleeping drought she slipped him, his belongings appear to have been stolen, and he's missed his plane. 

Once he makes it back to England, he acts embarrassed, but all his diplomatic pals know something is up. He wonders about the girl, and whether she actually made it back to England, and decides to place a mysterious advertisement in the classifieds for "Passenger to Frankfurt." Soon a mysterious response is printed, and he finds himself passing the girl on a bridge, where she hands him some tickets to a Wagnerian opera. There, he finds himself sitting by her, but they don't talk, and she just makes some musical notes in his program. Eventually he deduces that they are the bars to "The Young Siegfried," a Wagner piece. He's still confused #heisnottheonlyone. Later, he attends a dinner at the U.S. Ambassador's residence and finds himself faced with the girl again, now presenting herself as a Countess. 

After dinner, she kidnaps him and takes him to meet with some mysterious powerful Brits at a country house where they basically tell him that they are freaked out by youths these days, who are essentially turning into neo-nazi/hippies and are gradually taking over the world. This mystery crew is a small group of important and concerned Brit leaders who are full of secrets and calling all the shots about world-saving. They want to enlist his services to figure out who's behind it all #MAKESSENSE (?!). 

So off he and the girl traipse to observe these mysterious and unruly youths at a series of music festivals (seriously) finally ending up at a castle in the Dolomites hosted by the richest, fattest woman Stafford has ever seen, who greets them in a formal gown, with solitary jewels on every finger and a colorful jeweled tiara, and hosts them at a mysterious, formal dinner also attended by uniformed young men who are basically a revived version of the Hitler youth (all blond, all putting their arms in the air and saying "Heil!"). This fat rich lady is apparently trying to take over the world via her youth army, led by the handsomest blonde guy Stafford has ever seen, who goes by Franz Josef and gets "heiled" all over the place, especially at the rallies he leads, Munich-beer-hall-style. 

Meanwhile, the British mystery league is like drawing diagrams about what's happening in the world and talking to other mystery leagues about them #againconfusing. Stafford's old aunt is also chatting with all her old man diplomatic friends and figuring out what's going on with the youths and the nazis and whatever else. She makes a trip to the mountains to confirm what it seems like we already knew, that the fat rich lady (an old family friend) is a fat rich nazi who wants to take over the world. Sort of. Aunt Matilda tells all her old man diplomatic friends about it, even though presumably they already knew, and are trying to figure out how to stop the total destruction of the world (Washington has been "razed," we're told). Eventually it turns out Aunt Matilda also knows a scientist who might have the key to solving the world's problems, and the British mystery league that Stafford signed up with go off to find him.

The YOA Treatment:

SHEESH. This book. Is intense. It was apparently published to honor Agatha's 80th birthday, and advertised as her 80th book. As an old lady, Agatha was clearly troubled by what was up with the youths of her elderly age, and felt like the world was going down the toilet. As Christie novels go, this one is practically dystopian, with armed crowds of young people singing Wagner, heil-ing everyone, and taking over world capitols. There are some pages that are fascinating, and really make you think of the somewhat bizarre alt-right trends of some folks around the world (such as the quote at the top). The description Agatha offers of the fat, rich lady (Big Charlotte) is so vivid and detailed that it makes you wonder if she saw someone like this at some point in her life, sitting on a throne in a German castle, surrounded by the world's most valuable art, covered in jewels, welcoming guests in velvet gowns and diamond-and-sapphire shirt studs to a dinner attended by a legion of uniformed young men with swords. 

This is the type of stuff Agatha has always been good at, images of glamour, painting a picture for her readers, intelligent folks acting as spies in odd but interesting situations. However, when she starts trying to interpret and discourse on global politics and youth culture things get... a little weird. A WIDE range of random characters meant to be politicians from a range of countries spend PAGES discoursing on the different types of weapons they have at their disposal to potentially stop the armies of youth around the world. The main characters disappear for periods of time with no explanation. At one point there's a wedding. We're meant to understand a couple inside jokes that figure into the plot, but are never clearly explained. A few quotes floating about on the world wide web from reviewers of this book sum it up pretty well: 

"...The rest of the book is largely a discourse on a favourite old theme of Mrs. Christie's, the present state of the world and its future outlook, on both of which she takes a somewhat dim view. In other words, for her eightieth book a rather more serious work than usual from this author." - Anthony Berkeley Cox, The Guardian, 1970

"Her eightieth book and though not her best very far from her worst...At moments one wonders whether the old dear knows the difference between a hippie and a skinhead but she is still marvelously entertaining." - Maurice Richardson, The Observer, 1970

This is the harshest, but perhaps most accurate, no offense to dearest Agatha: 

"The last of the thrillers, and one that slides from the unlikely to the inconceivable and finally lands up in incomprehensible muddle. Prizes should be offered to readers who can explain the ending. Concerns the youth uproar of the 'sixties, drugs, a new Aryan superman and so on, subjects of which Christie's grasp was, to say the least, uncertain (she seems to have the oddest idea of what the term 'Third World' means, for example)." - Robert Barnard, from his book A Talent to Decieve - An Appreciation of Agatha Christie [She uses the term Third World to refer to some kind of new political society envisioned by these neo-nazi hippie youths taking over the world, bless her]

I must say, this was not my favorite, though I did really enjoy the normal spy bits, and found some of the concerns about the world a bit prescient of our Agatha, considering the troubling political circumstances we find ourselves in today (she literally mentions trouble in Syria). The solution she finds to the world's problems seems a BIT unlikely, but perhaps she was prescient about that too. 

- E.