BOOK REVIEW, Over the rails on Agatha's trail NASSAU AND CITY Edition

• Published in: Newsday
• Main Author: DICK ADLER. CHICAGO TRIBUNE. The Chicago Tribune is a Tribune Co. newspaper
• Format: Book Review
• Language: English
• Published: Long Island, N.Y Newsday LLC 09-06-2005
• Edition: Combined editions
• Subjects: Christie, Agatha (1890-1976); Eames, Andrew

On a trip to Aleppo, Syria, [Andrew Eames] - no great mystery fan and certainly not one of [Agatha Christie]'s superloyal band of readers - accidentally discovered that in 1928 Christie also had visited that city. "I had no idea that this doyenne of the drawing-room mystery had first traveled out to Iraq, alone, by train, as a 30-something single mother," he tells us in "The 8:55 to Baghdad." "And that thereafter she'd spent 30 winter seasons living in testing conditions 3,000 miles from home, in a land of Kurds, Armenians and Palestinians, doling out laxatives to help the sheikh's wives with their constipation." Old Christie hands and modern-day Lawrences of Arabia obsessed by the Middle East are natural readers of this marvelous book. But even if the closest you've ever gotten to an Agatha Christie adventure is to switch TV channels away from a Poirot or Miss Marple episode, and even if the idea of traveling to Baghdad fills you with a species of dread, you'll appreciate the energy, imagination and amazement of Eames' fascinating journey.