They came to Baghdad - Agatha Christie [105]
How much I have loved that part of the world.
I love it still and always shall.
Charles Osborne on
They Came to Baghdad
During the 1951 excavation season at Nimrud, a small room was added to the team’s house for Agatha Christie’s exclusive use and at her expense. For £50 she acquired a square, mudbrick room with a table and two chairs. On the walls she hung two pictures by young Iraqi artists. ‘One was of a sad-looking cow by a tree; the other a kaleidoscope of every colour imaginable, which looked like patchwork at first, but suddenly could be seen to be two donkeys with men leading them through the Suq.’44 On the door, one of the party fixed a placard in cunei- form, announcing that this was the Beit Agatha, or Agatha’s house. It was here that she settled down seriously to write her autobiography.
The year 1951 saw the publication of a novel, They Came to Baghdad, and, in the United States only, a volume of stories, The Under Dog.
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With the novel, They Came to Baghdad, Agatha Christie returned to the thriller for the first time since the Tommy and Tuppence adventure, NorM? (1941). And NorM? had been the first since the twenties. Thrillers, as opposed to domestic murder mysteries, are few and far between in the oeuvre of Mrs Christie, though she never abandoned the genre because, as she admitted on more than one occasion, she found the thriller not only very satisfying to write but also much easier than the domestic crime story. A major difference between a detective novel and a thriller is the difference between ‘who did it’ and ‘will they get away with it’, but Agatha Christie always retained in her thrillers an element of mystery from the domestic murder mystery novel. The question ‘Who?’ always has to be answered in a Christie thriller, and it is this question which provides most of the interest in They Came to Baghdad.
The heroine Victoria Jones, is another of those idealized young Agathas, intrepid, over-imaginative girls bored with life at home and longing for adventure abroad.
The plot is engaging and highly readable hokum. What distinguishes Agatha Christie’s thrillers from most others is not only the traces of mystery which are carried over from her domestic crime stories but also her lightness of touch and an air of self- mocking humour, far removed from the lifeless, mechanical spoofing which passes as humour in the works of Ian Fleming and his followers. An additional enjoyment is derived in They Came to Baghdad from the lively authenticity of the background, and especially the use of Baghdad, a city the archaeologist’s wife knew very well. There is also a diverting picture of an archaeological camp in the desert, and of its absent-minded leader, Dr Pauncefoot Jones.
A preposterous plot, a delightful and typical Christiean heroine, and well-drawn minor characters, these are the ingredients which combine to make They Came to Baghdad so easy to read… The punctuation of the New York Times in its praise of They Came to Baghdad is such that the intended compliment is impressively multiplied: ‘The most satisfying novel in years, from one of the most satisfying novelists!’ The London Times Literary Supplement thought that They Came to Baghdad contained one of the best surprises since the unmasking of the criminal in The Seven Dials Mystery. Well, yes, but the assiduous reader might just, this time, find himself prepared for that particular surprise.
This essay was adapted from Charles Osborne’s The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie: A Biographical Companion to the Works of Agatha Christie (1982, rev. 1999). Mr. Osborne was born in Brisbane in 1927. He is known internationally