The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax, by Dorothy Gilman (audiobook review)

Categories: Mystery, audiobook
Series: Mrs. Pollifax #2
Book source: Public library
  
I've been a Mrs. Pollifax fan for a long time, so when I saw that our public library had some of Dorothy Gilman's delightful mystery series in audio format, I wanted to give them a try.  I enjoy audiobooks when I'm doing housework, knitting, or running errands.  Listening to a book with which I'm already familiar means I don't have to worry if my attention wanders for a few moments... for instance, while counting stitches. 

Mrs. Pollifax is an elderly (these days, we might say late middle-aged) woman who keeps busy with her Garden Club, volunteering at the local hospital, her karate class, and a little spying on the side.  In the first book, The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax, she walks into the CIA to volunteer as a spy, where covert operations chief Carstairs accidentally given an courier assignment: travel to Mexico as a tourist, and pick up a package from a bookstore owner.  The operation goes spectacularly wrong, and Mrs. Pollifax finds herself imprisoned in Albania.  Being Mrs. Pollifax, she immediately turns her ingenuity to figuring out an escape plan. 

The Mrs. Pollifax novels are entertaining, exciting, and often quite funny.  Although Mrs. Pollifax has been compared to Agatha Christie's Miss Marple, the two have little in common beyond their age (well over 50) and a certain aptitude for seeing past surface appearances.  Mrs. Pollifax is far more adventurous, and her exploits involve much more travel than Miss Marple usually undertakes.  Miss Marple has a vague, fluttery exterior which belies her razor-sharp mind.*  Mrs. Pollifax is more definite (dare I say, more American?) in appearance and behavior, though her ability to, as Carstairs puts it, sustain the role of innocent (and sometimes aggrieved) tourist is invaluable in her work for the CIA.

In The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax, Carstairs once again calls on Mrs. Pollifax.  This time, she will be traveling to Turkey to aid a defecting Communist agent -- who is really a Western double agent.  When everything goes wrong, it's up to Mrs. Pollifax and her young friend Colin Ramsey to save the day.

This reading of The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax is quite good.  The narrator, Barbara Rosenblat, is adept with accents and voices; each major character has an individual voice.  I'm not enough of an expert to know whether the Turkish and gypsy accents were accurate, but the educated English accent used for several characters was reasonably good for an American audience (though it probably wouldn't convince a British audience.)  The characterization was equally solid; many of the characters' inflections sounded just the way I "hear" them in my head. 

I enjoyed this reading enough to want to seek out the rest of the series in audiobook format, provided they are performed by the same voice actor.  I'd recommend this series to those who enjoy light mystery and/or light spy novels.


* I mean no disparagement of Miss Marple, of whom I am even more fond than I am of Mrs. Pollifax.  (See my post on Agatha Christie.)