Here are three more Mrs. Pollifax novels by the incomparable Dorothy Gilman. "What we are looking for -- aside from the stolen plutonium, Mrs. Pollifax -- is evil in its purest form." She has been leading a very full her garden club, karate, yoga, a little spying now and again, but in A Palm for Mrs. Pollifax, her mission uniquely suits go to a famous health resort where the world's intelligence agents have gathered and track down a missing package of plutonium. Just enough plutonium to make an atomic bomb. Sounds interesting enough, but it isn't until she meets Robin, a young jewel thief, that the real adventure begins. Mrs. Pollifax on Safari takes her to Africa where she has been sent on safari in order to smoke out an international assassin whose next target is the president of Zambia. "Just take a lot of pictures of everyone on the safari," the CIA man told her, "one of them has to be our man." It sounded simple enough. But shortly after Mrs. Pollifax begins taking pictures someone steals her film. Then she is kidnapped by Rhodesian terrorists. The rest is mystery. "The job we have in mind," Carstairs began, "could be extremely dangerous. We want to get a man out of China." In Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station, our heroine with the white hair and penchant for old hats is plunged into another dangerous mission for the CIA. Posing as a tourist in China, Mrs. Pollifax meets the dark challenge of the Orient in order to safeguard a treasure. So get comfortable in your favorite chair and join America's most senior and most eccentric secret agent on three missions filled with mystery, intrigue, and danger.
Dorothy Edith Gilman started writing when she was 9 and knew early on she was to be a writer. At 11, she competed against 10 to 16-year-olds in a story contest and won first place. She attended Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and briefly the University of Pennsylvania. She planned to write and illustrate children's books. She married Edgar A. Butters Jr, in 1945, this ended in divorce in 1965. Dorothy worked as an art teacher & telephone operator before becoming an author. She wrote children’s stories for more than ten years under the name Dorothy Gilman Butters and then began writing adult novels about Mrs. Pollifax–a retired grandmother who becomes a CIA agent. The Mrs. Pollifax series made Dorothy famous. While her stories nourish people’s thirst for adventure and mystery, Dorothy knew about nourishing the body as well. On her farm in Nova Scotia, she grew medicinal herbs and used this knowledge of herbs in many of her stories, including A Nun in the Closet. She travelled extensively, and used these experiences in her novels as well. Many of Dorothy’s books, feature strong women having adventures around the world. In 2010 Gilman was awarded the annual Grand Master Award by the Mystery Writers of America. Dorothy spent much of her life in Connecticut, New Mexico, and Maine. She died at age 88 of complications of Alzheimer's disease. She is survived by two sons, Christopher Butters and Jonathan Butters; and two grandchildren.
I love all of the Mrs. Pollifax books, because even though it's obviously fiction, it's strange enough and real enough that I can easily imagine it actually happening. Maybe by the time I'm a grandmother I will have overcome my laziness sufficiently to become a spy.
I picked up this three volume book at a used book store, and the stamp inside says it once belonged to the Watts Branch Library on Compton Avenue in Los Angeles. All the novels were written in the 1970s (a great decade!) and are slightly silly, fun, and wonderfully dated. The mysteries are solved by a more-than-middle aged Mrs. Pollifax who is an undercover agent for the CIA. No cellphones or AI are available for espionage, just Mrs. Pollifax's good sense, nuanced human intuition, and resourcefulness. I enjoyed them.
Mrs. Pollifax is just light enjoyable reading. There's just enough action to keep it exciting. I like how she keeps an open mind to all the people she meets.
I love the quaint way she gets involved with mysteries and with out bad language or sex language. It is a great read any and all of her books in the Mrs. Pollifax Mysteries.