The Passenger by
Chris Petit
hbk out April 06
Published by Simon Schuster
at £12.99
An unusual 'American conspiracy' novel, though written by a Briton and
based almost entirely in the UK. It is an alternative explanation to the
Lockerbie Pan-Am disaster in 1988, giving a very different theory as to
the perpetrators.
Collard, a British businessman on the fringes of the arms trade, was due
to fly from Frankfurt to New York with his son Nick, but due to a sudden
business appointment, breaks his journey in London and misses the
doomed onward flight, which his son ostensibly takes. When the crash is
reported, Collard gatecrashes an investigating team and ends up in
Lockerbie, frantic to find his son's body – which never turns up, though
he sees mysterious Americans in helicopters hi-jacking a few corpses.
He is interrogated and told that Nick was not on the plane, but his
luggage was. The plot goes on into the interaction between the drug trade,
arms sales and Middle East terrorism.
Interspersed with this mainstream story, is the repeated appearance of a
super-annuated CIA agent, James Angleton, who had been in the same
UK public school as Collard, who was the architect of many US
undercover escapades. There are numerous flashbacks to 1943, to more
recent meetings in Wales of old spies, and of old CIA adventures and
scandals. The characters introduced include Graham Greene, Kim Philby,
and Edgar Hoover. The Dallas shooting of JFK, the death of Marilyn
Monroe and other disputed events are all laid at the feet of shadowy US
agencies.
I found the book a confusing and fragmented story, with a strange format
of short chapters and allusions to people and events that meant little to
me, almost as if the author was having a secret dialogue with himself. He
attributed some particularly obscene remarks to Graham Green, which
may be true, but if not, are rather repugnant.
The jacket blurb says that his previous book, The Psalm Killer, was a big
seller, and there are critic quotes from 'the heavies' to back that up – but
'The Passenger' is not a novel I would want to read from choice.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
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The Passenger by
Chris Petit
