They Came to Baghdad

by Agatha Christie

Baghdad is the chosen location for a secret superpower summit. Unfortunately the word is out, and an underground organisation in the Middle East is plotting to sabotage the talks. 

Into this explosive situation skips Victoria Jones, a girl With a yearning for adventure who gets more than bargains for when a wounded agent dies in her hotel room. Now, if only she could make sense of his final words '...Lucifer...Bashrah...Lefarge...'

• Publish Date: 2004 (first published 1 January 1951)
• Publish Status: Unknown
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Planet Three Publishing
• Edition: Agatha Christie Collection
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 224
• Language: English

Reviews

[MurderByDeath]

This was a surprise.  I'm certainly a long way from having read the entire Christie canon, but I've read enough to expect a certain...atmosphere in her books.  They Came to Baghdad certainly defied those expectations.  Exuberant is the only word that comes to mind.   Unfortunately the plot is ludicrous.  For the first 13 chapters, Christie was on fire, creating rich characters and setting.  The breaking of the fourth wall in Chapter two, when Christie's narrator uses the collective present (Victoria was like most of us, ...), has left me wondering if there isn't a touch of the autobiographical in Victoria.  I can imagine Victoria's first impressions of Baghdad being Christie's and I could well believe her final thoughts on relationships are pulled from Christie's first hand knowledge.  It isn't until the plot is revealed that it all goes sideways.  It's all just a bit too Austen Powers.   Still, if you can overlook it (and it becomes harder to do so in the second half of the book, to be honest), it's a highly entertaining book; practically a romp.  I enjoyed it overall, and it was worth the wobbly plot to see Christie's lighter side.   (This was a buddy read for Summer of Spies.)