The prince of Ramat, a fictional Middle Eastern country, dies in a revolution. Before he does, he asks his English pilot to find a way to get his jewels, worth three quarters of a million pounds, out of the country and safely out of his enemy’s hands. The pilot spends a mysterious twenty minutes alone in the hotel room of his sister and teenage niece, and when his and the king’s bodies are later found, the jewels aren’t with them.
The story then moves to an exclusive all-girls boarding school in England, Meadowbank. Among its pupils are the pilot’s niece Jennifer, her best friend and the daughter of a former intelligence agent, Julia, and the dead king’s cousin, Princess Shaista. The faculty and staff include school co-founder and formidable headmistress, Miss Bulstrode; her co-founder and reliable right-hand, Miss Chadwick; her presumed successor, Miss Vansittart; the new secretary, Ann Shapland; an unlikeable games mistress with a history of uncovering people’s secrets, Miss Springer; a smart English and Geography teacher, Miss Rich; a snobby French teacher, Mademoiselle Blanche; and a handsome young gardener, Adam, who’s actually a British intelligence officer undercover to ferret out anyone who may be after the king’s jewels. All lovely and idyllic, until one late night when Miss Springer is found dead in the new Sports Pavilion.
Cat Among the Pigeons is a bit of a mixed bag for me. I LOVE boarding school mysteries, and as someone who grew up in an all-girls Catholic school, stories that take place in that kind of environment are among my favourite kinds. But I’m also not fond of mysteries involving international espionage. Nothing against them, they’re just not my thing. And even though, at its heart, this mystery is about missing diamonds, there’s a lot of international intrigue flavouring the crimes.
As a mystery I’m trying to solve, this case unfortunately falls a bit flat for me. The location of the diamonds is obvious really early on. They’re clearly at the centre of the whole thing, so the motive behind the murders also seems easy enough to guess. The methods are also fairly straightforward: Miss Springer is shot from four feet away, and the blunt object used to kill the second murder victim is mentioned within the same chapter. All that’s left to figure out is whodunnit.
This isn’t to say that the murderer’s identity is easy to suss out. I’m actually at the point right before the big reveal, and I don’t know who the murderer is. I have my suspicions, of course, but I don’t feel particularly strongly about them. The trouble is, what I usually LOVE in Agatha Christie mysteries is the psychology aspect. Give me ALL the drama! Give me ALL the overwhelming emotions and personality clashes! If money is involved, then let the suspects be all shady and scheming and trying to appear perfectly innocent. With the whole espionage angle and GBP750,000 at stake, there’s a bit of professional detachment to this crime, and that in turn makes it not quite as gripping for me as her other works.
That being said, this is still a good book, and an enjoyable read. I loved reading about the school and all the personalities in it. There’s a chapter composed of characters’ letters to home that I found really interesting. I also really enjoyed the subplots about characters’ lives, like Miss Bulstrode choosing her successor, Miss Chadwick worried about upcoming changes to her beloved school, Ann Shapland being a restless sort with a series of different jobs and not wanting to settle down and marry her nice but dull boyfriend, and so on.
It’s just as a mystery where I’m trying to piece together the clues that this case isn’t quite as much fun for me as some of Christie’s others. I may have enjoyed it more if I’d simply read it as a story rather than tried to solve it, but even then, I wish there had been a lot more focus on the boarding school intrigue and personality clashes amongst students and staff, and a lot less on the whole hidden diamonds thing.
Did I Get It Right?
30% yes? Which in this case is pretty much a no, LOL. I did figure out one of the murders, and I actually did suss out quite a number of details about other characters. I even guessed the ultimate big reveal at one point. Unfortunately, I then dismissed that guess as a red herring, and deemed the actual big reveal villain to be innocent. Oops.
The epilogue, about the ultimate recipient of the prince’s diamonds, was a surprise to me, and also really sweet.
***SPOILERS BELOW***
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