Cat Among the Pigeons

by Agatha Christie Book 32 in the Hercule Poirot series.

First published 1959

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After a revolution in the fictional Middle Eastern kingdom of Ramat, a cache of royal jewels is secretly carried to England. At Meadowbank, an elite girls’ school, a teacher is shot in the sports pavilion and further violence suggests that someone believes the jewels are hidden among the pupils’ possessions.

Poirot enters late in an investigation shaped by decolonisation, international rivalries and the school’s enclosed hierarchy. The novel contrasts the apparent safety of post-war English education with political upheaval abroad, showing how imperial connections and private ambitions can bring distant conflicts into a domestic institution.