The Book is Good in parts, I like alot of the Characters but I found some confusing, I thought Victoria was Great, sadly Wikipaedia spoilt it for me, I wanted to have a synopsis of the book to get me started but it gave away too much, This book is compared to The Man In The Brown Suit which I think is a Much better Book, It is a pity Agatha Christie didn't write another Book with Victoria Though

Perhaps it was an excuse to write about locations AC ws very familiar with but I can't see that that is a problem. The note that always jars with me (and I actually DO like this book alot) is the way Victoria, who isn't a stupid girl, falls in love in an instant with a man she meets for five minutes and then goes haring across the world to find him again. Once I get past the feeling my incredulity has been stetched to it's limits, I can get on with enjoying the rest of the book. I guess I can forgive AC such an unbeleivable plot device!!!

The character of the East is the main reason I find this book one I return to again and again. Her love of this part of the world and her understanding of the people comes across powerfully. And Victoria, although not quite as memorable as some main female characters, has a lot of charm and is very human in the way she stumbles through life.

So plausable might be stetching the point but it is very readable. And it gives us a beautiful picture of Baghdad which, recently, is a place where only negative news has come. I can imagine how horrified AC would be at what has happened in her much loved East.

I dislike all other Christie's thriller attempts, but, strangely enough that one is one of my Christie favourites. Maybe I'm positively predjuiced towards it - it's my first (or second, can't remember which) Christie.

"Victoria, who isn't a stupid girl, falls in love in an instant with a man she meets for five minutes and then goes haring across the world to find him again."

Considering the improbable international intrigue plot, that's far from the most improbable thing in the novel! Besides, infatuation can do strange things to people, especially in the initial stage.

Victoria is, perhaps, the most likable and well-developed of Christie's "spirited young thriller women". Her talent for mimicry and lies gives her an individuality most other such characters lack. In fact, as an Amazon reviewer pointed out, that book can be read as being about Victoria Jones and how she handled herself through sticky situations, instead of viewing this as a mystery or a thriller.

Christie's familiarity with the setting definitely helped her to create a more engaging athmosphere.

The reflections on the dangers of idealism actually managed to be poignant here for me, instead of just some reactionary rambling. Maybe it was because they were thematically connected to archeology - a subject about which Christie most likely felt quite deeply - the epiphany about the importance of common man's happiness as opposed to idealism which doesn't care whom it hurts on his way, strikes Victoria when she remembers ancient pottery . (Well, and the villains were not left-wing. Christie doesn't really know how to write left-wing villains well).

"Is it at all a plausible story?"

Definitely not. But it still managed to be entertaining and refreshing for me - something which her other thrillers didn't.