They Came to Baghdad

They Came to Baghdad is an unusual Agatha Christie novel. It’s about espionage, international intrigue, mysterious organisations and the like.

Young typist Victoria Jones gets caught by her boss doing an unflattering impression of his wife and is summarily dismissed.

Sitting on a bench in the park, eating her lunch and pondering an uncertain future, Victoria makes the acquaintance of a young man called Edward and immediately falls in love with him.

Sadly, he is off to Baghdad the following day. However, Victoria manages to follow him there and ends up embroiled in all manner of exciting and dangerous situations.

I quite like the book (which obviously has to be read from a 1951 perspective) but it is curiously un-Christie like.

She didn’t make many forays into this particular genre –‘Destination Unknown’ was published three years later and is in a similar vein – and I think they are a product of the time.

World War Two had not long been over and the cold war was happening; spies and political uncertainty were the order of the day.

As always, Agatha manages to weave a love story in amongst the adventure but ‘They Came to Baghdad’ has a quite serious feel about it.

However, she does keep us guessing and there are surprises.

This book would not feature in my Agatha Christie top ten (which I will talk about elsewhere) but I think it is certainly worth a read.

You can get hold of this rather different Agatha Christie book via the following links.

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