The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax, by Dorothy Gilman
This oddly cozy spy thriller has some similar qualities as Gilman’s The Tightrope Walker: crisp writing, a sheltered and depressed heroine discovering that both her life and her own capacities are far greater than she imagined, and a generous view of humanity despite a fair amount of murder and mayhem.
Mrs. Pollifax, a sixty-something widow with grown children, is quietly depressed. Her life lacks meaning, and also lacks joy. Taking inspiration from an unexpected question from a doctor, she shows up at the CIA and suggests that they hire her as a spy; due to a conglomeration of coincidences and accidents, they actually do hire her, but as a one-time-only courier for a mission which requires someone who absolutely cannot be recognized, and which shouldn’t be dangerous. Needless to say…
While dated in some ways, it’s more due to language than worse things; the large of array of non-American characters generally prove to be a lot more individual and less stereotypical than one might expect. Like the Indian guru in The Tightrope Walker, they all have their own quirks and agendas, all the way down to the cameo by a family of Albanian goat-herders and their herd of goats that Mrs. Pollifax reluctantly hides within.
The sensible, not quite unflappable but certainly hard-to-flap Mrs. Pollifax is a great character, and it’s an immense pleasure to see her in a sequence of escalating dangers in which she is both a fish out of water and a fish who was always meant to be in water, and never got a chance till now.
This was delightful and I am delighted to know that there’s plenty more where it came from.
The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax (Mrs. Pollifax Series Book 1)
Crossposted to https://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/2212278.html. Comment here or there.
Mrs. Pollifax, a sixty-something widow with grown children, is quietly depressed. Her life lacks meaning, and also lacks joy. Taking inspiration from an unexpected question from a doctor, she shows up at the CIA and suggests that they hire her as a spy; due to a conglomeration of coincidences and accidents, they actually do hire her, but as a one-time-only courier for a mission which requires someone who absolutely cannot be recognized, and which shouldn’t be dangerous. Needless to say…
While dated in some ways, it’s more due to language than worse things; the large of array of non-American characters generally prove to be a lot more individual and less stereotypical than one might expect. Like the Indian guru in The Tightrope Walker, they all have their own quirks and agendas, all the way down to the cameo by a family of Albanian goat-herders and their herd of goats that Mrs. Pollifax reluctantly hides within.
The sensible, not quite unflappable but certainly hard-to-flap Mrs. Pollifax is a great character, and it’s an immense pleasure to see her in a sequence of escalating dangers in which she is both a fish out of water and a fish who was always meant to be in water, and never got a chance till now.
This was delightful and I am delighted to know that there’s plenty more where it came from.
The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax (Mrs. Pollifax Series Book 1)
Crossposted to https://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/2212278.html. Comment here or there.