By 1959, Agatha Christie had gotten tired of Hercule Poirot, but her fans hadn't. One way she balanced her desires against that of her readers was to restrict Poirot to the last few chapters of "his" novels. Cat Among the Pigeons starts with Ali Yusef, an English-educated Middle Eastern prince trying to escape from a revolution along with his pilot and school friend, Bob Rawlinson. They die in a sabotage-induced crash, but not before Bob manages to hide Ali's jewels *somewhere* in Bob's sister's luggage.
A few months later, Rawlinson's niece Jennifer enrolls in a girl's school and distinguishes herself in nothing but tennis. She does, however make friends with Julia, whose mother was in British Intelligence during the war, and it's Julia who contacts Hercule Poirot after a student disappears and a teacher is found murdered. Poirot gets the credit for solving the mystery, but it's really Julia and her mother who figure it out. I think Cat Among the Pigeons would have been better without Poirot, and would have liked to have seen a bit more of the workings of the school.
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