Agatha Christie: Passenger to Frankfurt

You know how her books usually are: tightly plotted, lots of action, interesting characters. None of those things happened in this book. The characters had no depth whatsoever. The plot was nonsense and did not hang together. I don't think I could even tell you what it was supposed to be, never mind what it was. The main characters vanished for large portions of the book. And everyone, absolutely everyone, went on long rambling speeches about NOTHING, like about how the Youth of Today Are Budding Fascists, based on, again, nothing.

It also went into some kind of weird and vague alternate future where Things Are Otherwise. Worldwide riots by The Youth.

And there was a bizarre fixation on Hitler youth and Siegfried and actual Hitler getting exported to South America. Plus Big Charlotte, one of the most hateful depictions of a fat person I've ever seen, and that includes J.K. Rowling, who hates them a whole lot.

There was nothing you wondered about or wanted to know, other than "What the hell is going on?" and "Will this person ever shut up?" Seriously, everyone just had meetings and infodumped. It was exposition 24/7. People tried to hit the main character with cars twice, but then he went into their stronghold or whatever and nobody cared? At the end he and the other main character decided over telegram to get married, despite no chemistry and no relationship to speak of--and he is obsessed with how she looks just like his sister. They were off screen traveling the world for ages but for no clear reason and accomplished nothing. Literally he wanted to know what his goal was on this trip and was told he wasn't allowed to know. And still went.

Also there was a magic science thing to make everyone benevolent permanently, called Benvo, which we must not use! We can't let you use it! The formula has been destroyed! Plus scientist is dying! Then he gets magically returned to health from someone getting shot in front of him. It was the shock! So did they use it? Unclear. Nothing was clear. It didn't even end properly. And there's the weirdest epilogue mainly about this little girl who has never been in the book up to this point.

They should not have published this book, if she was as far gone as it seems she was. That's unkind to an excellent author, though maybe it reveals that even authors we admire have depths of weird obsessions that we'd rather not know about. Everyone is human, racists and every kind of -phobe included. It was a bit like having Thanksgiving dinner with that ancient and witty great-aunt you always liked and discovering she gets really racist when she has two glasses of wine.

Truly the worst published novel I've ever read, even worse than The Goldfinch, which is really saying something. Also it made me wonder if I was making accidental references to terrible racist material when I named my old cat Siegfried. No! I just read the medieval text! Medieval texts were there first. Aw, man.