DORTHY GILMAN – Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station. Doubleday Crime Club, hardcover, 1984. Fawcett, paperback, 1986.

   What happens when you cross a sweet little old lady sleuth who has a “penchant for odd hats and growing geraniums” with a Bondian-style amazon spy? You get one of the most popular female mystery characters of the last twenty years, Mrs. Emily Pollifax.

   Dorothy Gilman had already made a name for herself as a children’s author (under her married surname of Butters) when she produced her first adult novel. and Mrs. Pollifax adventure, in 1966.

   Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station is the sixth novel to feature the grandmotherly CIA agent, and it is a good example of the series. There is the exotic locale, this time the Silk Route in the People’s Republic of China. There is a dangerous mission to perform, this time the smuggling of a man from a labor reform camp and out of the country.

   There is an evil, and unknown, enemy agent set to destroy the mission — and possibly our heroine. And there is, of course, the amazing Mrs. Pollifax, that gentle soul who can prove, when necessary, that her brown belt in karate is a deadly weapon.

   Having researched her novel in China, Gilman provides some marvelous impressions of that mysterious land. This descriptive prose lends a level of realism to the comic book quality of the spy story.

   Readers know when they pick up a Mrs. Pollifax story that evil will fail, good will prevail, and Mrs. P. will happily return to her geraniums. Gilman’s gentle spy stories (with a minimum of violence) will appeal more to fans of Miss Marple than to Smiley fans.

   In The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax (1966), the heroine is kidnapped in Mexico and ends up in an Albanian prison. This story was filmed in 1970 as Mrs. Pollifax, Spy, starring Rosalind Russell. Other titles in this entertaining series include The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax (1970), The Elusive Mrs. Pollifax (1971), and A Palm for Mrs. Pollifax (l973).

   Besides Mrs. Pollifax, Gilman has created several other intriguing women: Sister John of A Nun in the Closet (1975), the psychic Madame Karitska of The Clairvoyant Countess (1975), and the troubled yet courageous Amelia Jones in the author’s most realistic mystery, The Tightrope Walker (1979). All of whom are well worth meeting.

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   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.