The Woman On The Orient Express, by Lindsay Jayne Ashford, uses Agatha Christie’s life for a dramatic historical adventure, with several mysteries.

After her divorce and her Harrowgate disappearance, Agatha Christie is traveling to Baghdad under an different name, hoping to get away from tabloid speculation and her ex’s new wedding. Agatha, as Mary, meets two other women traveling alone. Katharine is on her way to work on a dig, oh, and to marry her boss as a condition of keeping her job. Nancy is on her way to visit her cousin, oh, and maybe continue her secret affair with a married man. All three are keeping secrets, and with good reason, but the journey will throw them together.

There are some wild events and high drama in this novel, but we’re led up to these skillfully, so that some of the wilder choices make sense. Readers are led to care about these characters before the extreme drama kicks in.

I already enjoyed Murder On The Orient Express and that the Doctor Who episode where Ten and Donna meet Agatha Christie at a house party. My friends and I did an escape room about a year ago (back in pre-plague times, when you could go in to an enclosed room and put your hands on all the clues), called Budapest Express, and it was so fun to rifle through luggage to solve the murder! Yes, of course we all encouraged each other to “use the little gray cells” about 10,000 times, and we were still amused by it at hour later when we caught the murderer and escaped. Anyway, I love that setting, and the luxe travel and exotic locations are the background for The Woman On The Orient Express, too.

At the risk of a mild spoiler, I was v v upset when a fairly minor character died because I’m always so excited when a character reads Classics at Cambridge.