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They Came to Baghdad
1005 pages
A breezy, sun-drenched espionage romp where a plucky heroine bluffs her way through international conspiracies and narrow escapes.
What it feels like
Reading this feels like stepping into a mid-century cinematic thriller, complete with sun-drenched desert landscapes, secret agents, and a delightfully ordinary heroine who finds herself entirely out of her depth. The pace is wonderfully brisk, trading the locked-room puzzles of traditional mysteries for a sweeping, Hitchcockian adventure full of narrow escapes and mistaken identities. There is a playful, breezy tone that keeps the suspense from ever feeling too heavy, even as the stakes rise. The prose is crisp and dialogue-heavy, carrying you effortlessly from London to the bustling markets and archaeological digs of the Middle East. It is a perfect escape for readers who love cozy thrillers, romantic adventure, and quick-witted protagonists who bluff their way to survival.
- Mood
- sun-drenched
- adventurous
- cinematic
- cozy-thriller
- Tone
- playful
- suspenseful
- wry
- breezy
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- ordinary person in extraordinary circumstances · deception and disguise · romantic adventure · the thrill of the unknown
- The writing
- Crisp, dialogue-driven, and effortlessly readable, laced with mid-century British wit.
- The arc
- Moves from restless yearning for excitement to breathless, high-stakes peril, ending in triumphant self-discovery.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love classic, Hitchcockian espionage romps featuring plucky, quick-thinking heroines bluffing their way through exotic locales.
Content notes
- murder
- kidnapping
- mild peril
- period-typical attitudes
About the book
E-book exclusive extras: 'Agatha Christie in Baghdad,' extensive selections from Agatha Christie: An Autobiography. Plus: Christie biographer Charles Osborne's essay on They Came to Baghdad.Agatha Christie first visited Baghdad as a tourist in 1927; many years later she would become a resident of the exotic and then open city, and it was here, and while on archaeological digs throughout Iraq with her husband, Sir Max Mallowan, that Agatha Christie wrote some of her most important works.They Came to Baghdad is one of Agatha Christie's highly successful forays into the spy thriller genre. In this novel, Baghdad is the chosen location for a secret superpower summit. But the word is out, and an underground organisation is plotting to sabotage the talks.Into this explosive situation stumbles Victoria Jones, a young woman with a yearning for adventure who gets more than she bargains for when a wounded secret agent dies in her hotel room. Now, if only she could make sense of his final words: 'Lucifer... Basrah... Lefarge...'
Description from Open Library.
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