The latest book in my return trip through Agatha Christie’s world is Cat Among the Pigeons. Someone is killing the schoolmistresses of one of the most exclusive girl’s schools in Britain.

This one comes from the period where Dame Agatha was truly sick and tired of Hercule Poirot; it’s one of the books where she keeps him offstage for as long as possible, bringing him in 2/3-rds the way through when one of the school girls finds something in a tennis racket, and remembers being told about him by an aunt, so she leaves school to find him.

Plot devices here include the kidnapping of the daughter of a foreign potentate. I find myself asking why I don’t find the plotting here as tiresome as in the Hilda Johansson tale I chatted about earlier, because I’m moved to give this book a higher ranking. Two reasons come to mind: first, the devices weren’t nearly as tired when Dame Agatha was writing, and that Dame Agatha wields them in a more believable story.

As for clues, no she doesn’t play fair this time. She gives Hercule Poirot access to information we don’t get until he announces the solution of the case, and she allows Hercule to guess correctly the interpretation of some clues that admit multiple interpretations without suffiecient evidence.

As a puzzle, it’s not one of her best. As a Poirot story, it’s almost non-existent, unless you’re partial to Deus Ex Machina endings. But it’s a passable story. All told, I wouldn’t recommend it unles you’re trying to be a completist. (If you’re looking for good mysteries, in fact, I’d suggest skipping this entire period; until she resigns herself to Poirot’s continued existence, the Poirot books are simply a master going through the motions, “phoning it in,’ as it were.)