Passenger to Frankfurt

Agatha Christie
Fontana Books

It was an unusual predicament for Sir Stafford Nye-to awaken in a stupor after being drugged, only to find his passport stolen. There was also no trace of the fascinating woman he encountered in Frankfurt who begged him to help save her life. But Sir Stafford's troubles are only just beginning. The target of two murder attempts, he now seeks the help of the stranger who so urgently sought his. If he can locate her. What he finds is a woman of numerous identities and twice as many secrets, who ushers him into the shadows of an international conspiracy that could well prove to be the death of them.

Well, what a very odd book.

I love the Agatha Christie TV adaptations, the Geraldine McEwan Marples are a particular favourite but the only thing I've ever read by her is a short horror story.  This one is one of her, very, late books published in 1970 to mark the ladies 80th birthday.  The cover art alone, by Tom Adams, was enough to get me to drag it off the shelf but a quick web search for a synopsis meant it jumped to the head of the pile.

What we have is not, as you might have guessed, a detective novel but a spy novel.  Now, I've only ever read one other spy novel in my life, the utterly brilliant 'Death will Have Your Eyes' by James Sallis, but I thought it was perhaps time for another.

At the heart of this book we have a global conspiracy to encourage armed revolt amongst disaffected teenagers by a shadowy cartel of nazi sympathisers and the plucky Brit aristos lined up against them. There are a few flashes of wit and brilliance here, Lady Matilda being a favourite and especially so when she heads off on her little spying trip, but on the whole this is a fairly uncomfortable read that seems much more of a chance for Christie to complain about the various she thinks that are wrong with the 1960s.  What kept popping into my head was how much it reminded me, in particular, of the movie adaptation of Michael Moorcock's 'The Final Programme'  (the first Jerry Cornelius novel) just with a very different mind set and purpose.

The story is sketchy and lacking in flow and the ending arrives unheralded and unexpected dragging itself out of the muddy morass of the rest of the book.  There's an interesting story in there somewhere but one that I think would have needed a few rewrites to tease into shape.

Jack Kirby's 'The Prisoner' comic

Earlier today I stumbled across a fantastic post over on 'Forces of Geek' that I want to share with you all. It features the entirety of the first issue of a never released comic book adaptation of Patrick McGoohan's 'The Prisoner' along with a link to another article explaining the genesis of the project.

The adaptation was written and pencilled by Jack Kirby (co-creator of 'Captain America', 'The Fantastic Four' and much, much more) and has mostly been inked by Mike Royer (a regular Kirby collaborator) although the project was obviously abandoned before he had finished as some of the pages exist in pencil form only.

Personally, I've never been much of a Kirby fan (cue collective gasps of horror from outraged Kirbynistas),  I love his backgrounds but not his figures (faces especially - although he absolutely nails Angelo Muscat as Number 2's butler) and find his writing unreadably pedestrian which is the case here.  That said, this is a fabulous artifact and well worth checking out.

Enjoy.

Jack Kirby's 'The Prisoner'

The Prisoner

In 1967 Patrick McGoohan severed his connection with the popular 'Danger Man' ('Secret Agent' in the US) TV series and devoted all his energy to creating a new show about the trials of a retired spy trapped in a remote and isolated village.

The 17 episodes tell the story of an un-named spy (McGoohan always denied that the central character was his Danger Man character, John Drake) who, in the event of his retirement from the secret service, finds himself confined in an incomprehensible coastal village filled with seemingly happy people each identified by numbers rather than names.

Over the course of the series we see, our begrudgingly numbered hero, Number 6, attempt to both escape and resist the attempts to break his spirit by the various incumbents of the Number 2 position (played by Leo McKern & Kenneth Griffith amongst others).

Many aspects of the series have become firmly established in popular consciousness; the village itself  (actually Portmeirion in North Wales), the Ron Grainer theme, 'Rover' the inflatable guard ball and the two key quotes from Number 6...

and of course...

'The Prisoner' was and indeed remains a singular creation. Loved and loathed in equal measure this  wilful, obtuse, stylised and enigmatic show is quintessential cult TV.  In it's attacks on authority and conformity and it's celebration of individual integrity and personal freedom it continues to amaze and baffle viewers to this day and remains both completely of it's time and utterly contemporary for exactly the same reasons.

So, below is the pilot episode 'Arrival'.  I'm not sure how many of the other 16 episodes are available online but the series has been released in box sets a number of times and is absolutely well worth your money.

Buy it here - UK / US

Be seeing you. 


The Prisoner - Arrival by tvchannels

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