Palm for Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman

 

I consumed another Mrs. Pollifax treat last week.  In this one, Mrs. Pollifax is sent on her first mission where she is more than a courier.  She is supposed to go to a posh health spa in Switzerland and try to find some stolen plutonium.  At the spa she is interested in a young Arab boy who is staying with his grandmother.  She can tell he is anxious about something, though he appears to just be playful.  Her Interpol co-agent thinks she is just being grandmotherly, but Mrs Pollifax wonders if this boy might just be the key to everything. 

 So...this book really shows its age though how it deals with plutonium.  At the beginning of the mission Bishop gives Mrs Pollifax a Geiger counter and plastic gloves and urges her not to touch the plutonium with her bare hands.  Then both she and the bad guys end up carrying the plutonium around in a suit case for days on end.  Yep.  They didn't really understand radioactivity back in the 1960s.  Besides that, it was as fun as the other Mrs. Pollifax books.  There were all the stock characters and Mrs. Pollifax's signature charm and whit.  I usually listen to Mrs Pollifax on RB Digital, which is being taken over by Overdrive this week.  I hope they will still be available. (1967, 191 p)