A secret summit of superpowers is to be held in Baghdad, but it is no longer secret. A shadowy group (which is both anti-Communist and anti-Capitalist) is plotting to sabotage the event. Things get complicated when enthusiastic young "adventurer" Victoria Jones discovers a dying secret British agent – Henry "Fakir" Carmichael – in her hotel room. His last words – "Lucifer...Basrah...Lefarge" – propel her into investigation. "Lucifer" refers to the mastermind, Victoria's crush, Edward, who is behind the plot. "Basrah" is the city where Carmichael saw Edward and recognised him as an enemy. "Lefarge" turns out to actually be "Defarge" and is a reference to a Charles Dickens character; it is an allusion to the fact that the name of a vital witness has been stitched into a scarf. While Victoria is the central character, the real heroine is Anna Scheele, secretary/executive assistant to an American banker, who has discovered a great deal about finances of the shadowy group. She appears rather sparingly, with a few brief appearances in the early part of the story, then seems to vanish, to the chagrin of the evil organization who fear her financial knowledge and who want to liquidate her, and of her allies who wish to protect her. She reappears unexpectedly at the last moment.
Reception
Julian MacLaren-Ross enthusiastically reviewed the novel in the 20 April 1951 issue of The Times Literary Supplement and said it was "more of a thriller than a detective story, though there are plenty of mysteries and two surprises reserved for the closing chapters; one of these is perhaps her best since the unmasking of the criminal in The Seven Dials Mystery." He went on to comment on that, "the easy expertise of the writing is once more a matter for admiration" and concluded that Christie's powers of invention "never fail her".[5]
Maurice Richardson of The Observer (4 March 1951) wrote: "A bit light and frilly, in parts almost giggly, as Agatha Christie's thrillers are apt to be, but it has the usual creamy readability and a deeply planted fiend."[1]
Robert Barnard: "Fairly preposterous example of thriller-type Christie, but livelier than some. Engaging heroine and unusually good minor characters – archeologists, hotelkeeper, etc. The plot concerns attempts to prevent The Big Three (Britain was one of them then) from coming together and making peace. Though the villains are not left-wing, they sound like her left-wing idealists of the 'thirties (wanting, as usual, to create a 'New Heaven and Earth' – highly dangerous!)"[6]
In the UK the novel was first serialised in the weekly magazine John Bull in eight abridged instalments from 13 January (Volume 89, Number 2324) to 3 March 1951 (Volume 89, Number 2331) with illustrations by "Showell".[7] An abridged version of the novel was published in the 1 September 1951 issue of the Star Weekly Complete Novel, a Toronto newspaper supplement, with an uncredited cover illustration.
^Chris Peers, Ralph Spurrier and Jamie Sturgeon. Collins Crime Club – A checklist of First Editions. Dragonby Press (Second Edition) March 1999 (p. 15).
^The Times Literary Supplement, 20 April 1951 (p. 241).
^Barnard, Robert. A Talent to Deceive – an appreciation of Agatha Christie – Revised edition (p. 206). Fontana Books, 1990. ISBN0-00-637474-3.
^Holdings at the British Library (Newspapers – Colindale). Shelfmark: NPL LON LD116.
