The Gate of Baghdad: A Short Story

Parker Pyne #8

by Agatha Christie, Hugh Fraser (Reading)

Just as boredom is setting in on his long trip by motor coach across the desert to Baghdad, Mr. Parker Pyne reads about the case of the missing Mr. Long, the famous defaulting financier who, as the papers would have it, is in South America. Another member of his party, Captain Smethurst, tells Pyne that he is worried about something. But before he can tell Pyne what it is, he is found dead, with no visible wound. Pyne must piece together what happened from various clues, including scraps of conversation overheard back in Damascus.

Genres: Mystery, Agatha Christie, Short Stories, Audiobook, Crime, Classics, Fiction

Audiobook

First published June 1, 1933

About the author

Agatha Christie also wrote romance novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, and was occasionally published under the name Agatha Christie Mallowan.

Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE (née Miller) was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap, which has been performed in the West End of London since 1952. A writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Christie has been called the "Queen of Crime". She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.

This best-selling author of all time wrote 66 crime novels and story collections, fourteen plays, and six novels under a pseudonym in romance. Her books sold more than a billion copies in the English language and a billion in translation. According to Index Translationum, people translated her works into 103 languages at least, the most for an individual author. Of the most enduring figures in crime literature, she created Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple. She atuhored The Mousetrap, the longest-running play in the history of modern theater.

Associated Names:
Agata Christie
Agata Kristi
Агата Кристи (Russian)
Агата Крісті (Ukrainian)
Αγκάθα Κρίστι (Greek)
アガサ クリスティ (Japanese)
阿嘉莎·克莉絲蒂 (Chinese)

Reviews

[Anne]

A crooked financial dude has escaped justice.
Shocking!
Parke Pyne is touring Jordan and makes a comment to the group he is traveling with that the con man might be anywhere by now. Even amongst them, right at that moment!
Could that be a prophetic statement?



After Parker Pyne has a strange conversation with another member of their tour, Captain Smethurst, a young man who seems stressed out and depressed. The next day, he dies on the bus while they are trying to cross the desert. Is it an accident?
And if it isn't an accident, whodunnit?

Not gonna lie, this one is really convoluted towards the end. Still, not too bad.

This was read as part of the short story collection Parker Pyne Investigates.

[Howard]

3.5 The Gate of Baghdad: Parker Pyne Short Story (audiobook) by Agatha Christie read by Hugh Fraser.

This is my first Parker Pyne story. The setting was interesting and now I’m going to have to read some longer stories to get to know the character better.

[Mohamed Ramadan]

رغم الأجواء الجيدة والأبطال الكُثر الا انها قصة جريمة عادية، وحبكتها لم تكن بالقوة الكافية بالنسبة لي!

~تمت القراءة في سبتمبر 2026~

[wilted flower]

This was a pleasant deviation from the usual Parker Pyne formula which was getting a bit repetitive as I was reading the stories one after the other as part of a collection. The typical Parker Pyne story centres around Pyne finding some comically original way to remedy the unhappiness of a given client. In doing so, he may enlist the help of his employees Madeleine de Sara, Claude Luttrell or even the famous Ariadne Oliver. 'The Gate of Baghdad' however, is wholly different. For one, Pyne is not approached by any client; nor does he undertake any mission. And secondly, it's a murder!

If there's one thing I love, it's a good old murder mystery. Now this twenty-page-long short story is in no way as exciting as a Christie novel, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. It was especially refreshing after the bad-to-mediocre stories that unfortunately preceded it in the collection.

[Tara]

I'm not a huge fan of mystery short stories as there generally is not enough runway to built up suspects and red herrings. But Christie's storytelling is usually excellent, and Hugh Fraser is one of my favorite audiobook narrators.

[Jack Heath]

4 Stars. Parker Pyne doesn't get involved in many serious crimes; this is the first with murder on the menu. As a short story, it's not bad. I read it in Mr. Parker Pyne, Detective from 1971 - a collection of 12 of the 14 stories. It first appeared in 1933 in Nash's Pall Mall Magazine. An audio version came out this century which may have added extra information about two of the characters. Unsure. Pyne is travelling from Damascus to Baghdad by motor coach, a 1930s mini-bus. Thirty six hours to cross the desert. No camels anymore, but they don't get stuck in the mud after a sudden downpour! The bus did. There are 11 others on the 6-wheeler: the young Netta Pryce and her stern aunt, three British Air Force officers, O'Rourke, Loftus and Williamson, two civil servants in Baghdad's pubic works department, Hensley and Smethurst, a Signor Poli who was on the same ship as Pyne from Brindisi, Italy to Lebanon, an Armenian mother and her adult son, and the driver. There's a hint throughout that one of the men could actually be the infamous Samuel Long, the bank embezzler, fleeing London. Which one, if any? Can you catch the clue? As usual, I missed it. (Au2021/No2025)

[Anna]

>>Audiobook Performed by Patricia Rutledge, Richard Rivets, Paul Freeman and others
app 28 min

[William]

Entertaining mystery listening 😎

This kindle e-book novella is trim? Amazon for $0.99

Parker Pyne arrived in Baghdad. There he becomes involved in an interesting case which he solved.

I would recommend this series and author to fans of Agatha Christie and British mystery novels 2024

[Abeer]

قصة "The Gate of Baghdad"
أو "بوابة بغداد" لأجاثا كريستي، وهي من ضمن مجموعة "تحريات باركر بين".

تدور أحداثها في ظروف مختلفة تمامًا عن باقي مغامرات باركر بين؛ فهذه المرة نجد أنفسنا في رحلة عبر صحراء بغداد، وبين خبر عن مجرم عالمي هارب وجريمة قتل، يجد باركر بين نفسه أمام لغز عليه أن يكشف غموضه.

وهنا يؤكد باركر بين أن اختصاصه لا يقتصر فقط على تقديم السعادة لمن يحتاج إليها، بل إنه متحرٍّ بارع أيضًا... حتى وإن ظل ينكر ذلك!

[Madeline]

No bueno.

[Mo]

It did not really hold my attention. I also think I expected better.

Audiobook
31 minutes 42 seconds

[Meg]

Mr. Pyne is on vacation and is called upon to solve a murder! A man dies on the ride to Baghdad and at first it is believed that he hit his head on the roof when the van went over a particularly violent bump but Mr. Pyne discovers that he was stabbed at the base of the skull with a stiletto. He observes the behavior of his fellow travelers and manages to pick out the culprit, who was a famed thief posing as a doctor. The dead man recognized him as a classmate from his boarding school days and knew that he was posing as a doctor. He promised to keep quiet until they reached Baghdad, thus sealing his fate.

[Pranit]

My first Parker Pyne story. Looking forward to more of Parker Pyne. Interesting story.

[a ☕︎]

rather bloodier than i expect my parker pynes to be, and where’s claude and madeleine? a bore.

[mairiachi]

5 stars - it reminds me of Hercule Poirot and how you suspect twelve different people at once, but not the person who actually did it. This time I only suspected two people at once and it was someone else but still a twist so good job on that one. Fun to read and it only takes a cpl minutes which is nice bc otherwise I'd get bored with Mr. Parker Pyne.

[Katie]

Well narrated but the problem with listening to a short story is I miss too much adjusting to the voice and sorting out the characters in the beginning and by the time I'm acclimated it's over. I would have enjoyed it more if I'd read the text.

[Lyndsay]

Less than an hour read time. Enjoyed listening in the car with my father on a long road trip.

[Andy]

Parker Pyne ist Poirots Schatten.

[Vance Miguel Johnson]

Atmosphere is totally there, but clearly one of her dated stories by the jokes about the “overly” masculine woman, and the immediate suspecting of the Italian and Armenian characters of the crime.

[Simon Bostock]

3.5 stars

A murder mystery on the way to Baghdad, Mr Parker Pyne is travelling with an assortment of RAF officers and civilians, when one of the passengers is killed.

I liked this short story as it built up a picture of travelling through the desert, from Damascus, and of the passengers making the trip, and wraps up the murder in the last few pages, avoiding the usual drawn out investigation. It even managed to use the word ejaculate, to mean shouting or saying something suddenly.

Some language of the time is used, to reference as the british officer class would say 'foreign men', worth a read, if you like short murder mysteries.

[James]

Here we have a murder mystery short story for Pyne to solve. A group of eclectic travellers leaving Damascus to Baghdad.

What I like about this story and marked it up for was that Agatha Christie spent much of her early life with her husband on archaeological digs across this region. So, she probably got inspiration for tgis story whilst out in the region.

[ᗩᗰIᖇᗩ ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚]

الحبكة ذكية بس القصة علي بعضها معجبتنيش :(

[itchy]

eponymous sentence:
p4: Formerly the Gate of Baghdad had been the gate of Death.

Apt.

Read as part of the collection Parker Pyne Investigates.

[Kayla Lodge]

I had fun reading this quick story.

[Kristen Bouma]

Ok

[Sarah Elizabeth]

Enjoyable but not memorable.

[A.M.]

Whilst on holiday a woman finds out the bank where all her savings are held has crashed due to fraud. She discusses it with Parker Pyne, who has made a career out of helping people solve their problems, and he advises her to continue on the part of the trip she’s already paid for and sort it out in the next city.
Meanwhile newspapers report the thief is in South America. Pyne comments that if it was him he’d be on the other side of the globe. [like Baghdad, eh?]
New people join their group and they all pile into a truck for the first part of their journey. When they arrive at the fort in a storm, one of the party is dead.
Captain Smethurst had been drunk and depressed in a nightclub the night before when he had hinted at a mystery to Pyne.
***
A sock full of sand as a cosh? Clever… but not actually the murder weapon.
I’ve not heard of Pyne but evidently he starred in another series of short stories that usually didn’t involve murder, ‘Parker Pyne Investigates’.
The sound effects people clearly had a great time with this one.
4 stars

[Jay Dial]

I read this because I came across it on here and it had Harley Quins name attached to the cover and I had thought I read all of Agatha Christie's Harley Quin stories so I searched it out, but it was a Parker Pyne story, I don't know why, anyway...
Maybe it was that disappointment in the protagonist that made me not like this story but I found it to lack the mystery and fun that I usually expect with Christie's stories even these short ones. Usually I consider a short 40 page story to be fine for an hours worth of a "time killer" but not this time.

[Vin Vineeta]

A woman travelling the world discovers that he banker defrauded all his clients and left her destitute, but she's advised to go on one last adventure which she has paid for. Her fellow tourists joked the banker could be anywhere, and maybe he was one of them. He is. And one of them ends up dead.

I listened to the BBC radio mystery. Not only is this a great short story, but the sound effect people had so much fun with it, I've never listened to an audiobook which felt more lively.

[Sarah Macdonald]

Mystery and travel combine in a typical Agatha Christie tale.

This short story doesn't"t compare with the marvellous Marple or the pedantic Poirot, but Mr.Parker Pyne is a likeable character. The story is somewhat short for plausible plot development, but a pleasant read nonetheless.