A Palm for Mrs. Pollifax

This book is fast paced and introduces a likable character that appears again in future installments. What I think is most interesting in this novel is the idea of seeing underneath the surface - Hafez' manic behavior is really fear. Sabry's disability is a sham. It's too easy to take things at

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face value and miss the really important.

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Mrs. Pollifax is sent to a famous health resort in Switzerland to track down a missing package of plutonium, but then she meets Robin, a young jewel thief and the fun really begins.
This book will keep you turning the pages and smiling clear to the end.

Another early entry in the series, and another enjoyable read. This time, Mrs. P is searching for missing plutonium, in the unlikely setting of an exclusive Swiss health resort. The secondary characters in this one are particularly appealing, particularly the boy Hafez.

The conceit is badly outdated and the characters are paper thin. Viewed as a response or rebuttal to the James Bond books this series has some worth. The notion of a nice old lady spying effectively due to her humane concern for the welfare of others is an attractive myth but it wears even less

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well than stories of an amoral and brutal spy.

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Light but satisfying, with a good mix of action and character development. I love the idea of the CIA employing a grandmotherly type, and the people she meets are equally interesting and talented.

I think I never quite figured out what the title referenced...I don't think of Palm Trees and Geneva, Switzerland in the same moment. Perhaps it was referencing the imaginary Arab, oil rich country of Zabya. Ah well, it was interesting to read a book about Arabs--in fact, Arab terrorists--in 2015.

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Since it was written in the 70's, it was refreshingly non-fear inducing.

Another very quick read, but one I enjoyed quite a bit

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One of the things that I like Mrs. Pollifax is that she evaluates each person on his or her "self," not by ethnicity or religion. It wasn't all that common when the books were written.

In this fourth book of the series, Mrs. Pollifax continues to grow and practice activities (such as karate) that

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will help her with her secret CIA agent jobs. This time she's off to Switzerland to try and find some missing plutonium that is probably going to make a very nasty bomb. She does her job with the ingenuity and friends that she makes.

The Mrs. Pollifax series is like popcorn. It's fluffy and comfortably filling. And like popcorn, it is oh so easy to pick up the next piece. I have already started the next book in the series.

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Mrs. Pollifax, that intrepid senior citizen who works for the CIA, is sent to a Swiss medical clinic to investigate stolen plutonium. Once there, she befriends a young boy who appears to be mortally afraid of someone or something. She also catches a jewel thief trying to steal her expensive-looking

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imitation jewelry. When her contact on the hotel staff is murdered just before he was going to meet her, things start heating up. But before she can discover the murderer and the plutonium, Mrs. Pollifax intends to find out why her little friend is so afraid and why his grandmother seems to be under guard. She recruits the jewel thief and they start sniffing around for clues. Before too long, Mrs. Pollifax, the boy and the jewel thief have uncovered a deadly secret that puts them all in danger.

Mrs. Pollifax is a kind, engaging character whose outgoing personality and homey advice endear her to friends and enemies alike. I like her devil-may-care attitude and her sense of wonder and ability to take in the sights as she dashes about on her mission. This book was originally published in 1985 so it made me chuckle when Mrs. Pollifax had to burn a secret message in the airplane bathroom. But thirty years later these books have become my go-to series when I want a comfort read.

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There's no need to recap the story as the publisher's blurb gives adequate hints. I find any of this series to be a look into a different time, one without sat phones or laptops to make investigation and communication easy. While the countries and politics are different, they are also much the

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same. Mrs. Pollifax is a singular woman, over 60, very good at logic, and possessed of that rarity: common sense. Each of the characters is definitely believable.
This is a reread for me, and I think that Barbara Rosenblat is excellent as narrator.

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I enjoyed the first three books in this series for the fun, improbable stories they tell – a older woman who becomes a most unlikely operative for the CIA. She gets into impossible predicaments that she manages to escape,and her life has some amazing coincidences in it. Having said that, I didn't

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appreciate this book as much as the earlier ones. Same improbable plot, different country – that was okay. But in this one, she claims that Jihad as a holy war is one of the 5 pillars of the “Moslem” faith. Jihad can mean a holy war but many who practice Islam also practice Jihad in much gentler, kinder ways, not holy war. The one-sided view made me not appreciate this book as much as I had hoped.

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The inimitable Mrs. Pollifax returns here for her fourth adventure, this time finding herself at a ritzy convalescent hotel in Switzerland, on the hunt for some stolen plutonium. While searching for this dangerous contraband, she also befriends a charming young British man with a mysterious past

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and a young Arab boy who is apparently terrified of his companions. As is so often the case with Mrs. Pollifax, the friends she makes along the way to reaching her objective prove to be useful allies, and some of their stories end up being more than a little germane to the central conspiracy she winds up confronting...

Although I would not describe A Palm for Mrs. Pollifax as being quite the equal of its three predecessors - The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax, The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax and The Elusive Mrs. Pollifax - in terms of either hilarity or narrative excitement, it had more than enough of both to make it an engaging entry in the series. I enjoyed Robin Burke-Jones' character, and his amusing exchanges with Mrs. Pollifax, as they both learnt that the other was not what or whom they had thought, were quite humorous. The adventure with Hafez at the castle was also most engrossing, and the climb down the medieval latrine was entertaining. This was written in 1973, as terrorism in the Middle East was just beginning to become more religious, rather than nationalist in nature, so the conclusion, in which the villain, a Muslim zealot intent on creating a worldwide theocracy, escapes, presumably to carry on with his scheming, was also fascinating. I finished the book, written so many decades ago, thinking of how Islamist terror has since become one of the gravest troubles facing our world, and wondering what Gilman (who died in 2012) made of it all. Did she think of this story at all, after 9/11? Did she see any parallels between her villain and figures like Osama bin Laden? I certainly did.

Leaving such musings aside, this was an entertaining addition to the series, even if it has never been one of my personal favorites, and I recommend it to anyone who has read and enjoyed the first three Mrs. Pollifax books.

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This time, Mrs. Pollifax is sent to look for stolen plutonium at the Hotel-Clinic Montbrison overlooking Lake Geneva in Switzerland. She meets some interesting characters, as usual: a cat burglar, a retired general turned head of the French police, an Interpol agent, and family members of the

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general of Zabya. And then there is the Geiger counter, “true evil”, and the cans of peaches. The Mrs. Pollifax stories are fun reads.

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2019 reread via Recorded Books audiobook narrated by Barbara Rosenblat