There comes a time when a master detective needs to get away from it all. But for Mr. Parker Pyne, it was not to be. Crime followed him like a shadow from the moment he took his seat on the Orient Express. The shrieks he heard were unmistakably those of terror - a terror that would strike again and again... in the misterious ruins of Petra... in an ancient city of Bagdad... and amid the tombs of the Pharaohs, where among a respectable company of Englisch nobleman is given her daily dose of death...