THEY CAME TO BAGHDAdD

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...'

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.