Tuesday, July 28, 2020

The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman


Mrs. Emily Pollifax has been a widow for a number of years.  She late husband was a lawyer and left her with plenty of money to live on so she fills her time with charity work and gardening. She seems fine on the outside, but inside there is a deep loneliness and boredom. When suicidal thoughts start to enter her mind she visits a doctor who recommends that she do something that she always wanted to do.  As she analyzes her feelings she realizes she always wanted to be a spy for the CIA.  She therefore goes to Washington DC and visits the offices of the CIA to volunteer to be a spy.  By accident she gets assigned to go on a secret mission as a courier.  They fly her to Mexico City and she is supposed to act like a tourist until it is time to pick up "the package".  It is a simple assignment, low risk, until everything goes wrong.  Before she knows what has happened Mrs. Pollifax finds herself in the hands of dangerous men in a faraway land.  

After reading The Illness Lesson, I felt like I needed to brush my teeth and rinse with Listerine.  I immediately returned to Mrs. Pollifax and decided to read the first in the series.  This one was even better than the one I read before, full of humor and charm, with a more carefully charted plot.  I think I am hooked.  I imagine there are a lot more Mrs. Pollifax novels in my future, (that is if they don't go away when Overdrive takes over RBDigital in a couple of months.) (1966, 208 p)

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