Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fun Middle Eastern adventure, 27 Jun 2004
Victoria Jones is a recently sacked shorthand typist who has an elastic approach to telling the truth, and a great longing for adventure "to Victoria an agreeable world would be one where tigers lurked in the Strand and dangerous bandits infested Tooting". She gets a chance at adventure when she meeets Edward, a handsome and charming young man on his way to Baghdad to work for an organisation called the Olive Branch, the purpose of which is to foster understanding between nations by getting young people together to read Shakespeare and Milton. He wishes that Victoria could join him there, and by a lucky coincidence, the very next day she is offered a job accompanying a lady with a broken arm on the journey out. She enterprisingly provides herself with fake references and claims to be the niece of archaeologist Dr Pauncefoot Jones, excavating at Basra. Victoria is entranced by Baghdad, but before she has a chance to find Edward, a wounded man stumbles into her hotel room and dies in her bed. Who is he? And who is the mysterious Mr Dakin? And what are the people at the Olive Branch really up to. And who on earth is Anna Scheele? This is a tremedously enjoyable book. Victoria is a delightful heroine, imaginative, romantic, enterprising, and quite outrageously untruthful. There are wonderful vivid descriptions of Baghdad, a complicated and exciting plot, and plenty of humour. Great fun.
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3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Adventure and mystery in Christie's favoured Middle East, 4 Oct 2001
This is a Christie book which differs from the majority of her work. Most obviously, the main character is not one of her famous personalities - Poirot, Marple, Tommy and Tuppence. Furthermore, instead of murder committed in the middle of someone's ordinary life, as so many of her stories are shaped, this book tells of a heroine who goes looking for excitement, romance and foreign adventure. She finds herself in a strange land, surrounded by unfamiliar faces and much that she sees but does not understand. When a murder occurs it seems so in keeping with the sinister atmosphere created by Christie that it does not stand out. It is just one of many mysteries to be solved. This was a very easy read, enjoyable whilst it lasted, but easily forgettable, unlike some of her other books.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Exciting adventure in 1940s Iraq, 16 Sep 2006
They Came to Baghdad is one of Agatha Christie's thriller adventure novels, and it has many parallels with her much earlier work: The Man in the Brown Suit.
Like Anne in The Man in the Brown Suit, They Came to Baghdad involves another young British heroine, Victoria Jones, who sets off on an adventure to exotic climes. She quickly gets mixed up in an international plot, and proves herself to be as feisty and intrepid as any decent heroine should be. The book is particularly fascinating for the snapshot it presents of Baghdad and Iraq in the 1940s, which was directly drawn from Christie's own experience there.
Those wanting a straightforward murder mystery Poirot/Marple-style will possibly be disappointed, as will those who insist on a water-tight and credible plot, but Baghdad is still enormous fun. And without wanting to give plot endings away, if you know a bit about Christie's marital status in the 1930 and the 1940s, the respective choices of romantic hero in the two works is somewhat touching.
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