thriller, suspense, friendship, ex-spy, sexagenarian, country-Jordan, Bedouin, cultural-exploration, smuggling, family, famous-author, historical-fiction*****

Somehow, I never read this one of the series. Farrell has a need to go to Jordan and wait for an unknown contact to rescue a last manuscript for a friend who died in Saddam Hussein's prison. But he needs a plausible cover and Emily is the only one he trusts to go with him. Add in terrorists, camels, and the historical site of Petra to make this an engaging and gripping mystery.
This falls into historical fiction even though it was written in 1997.
The wonderful narrator Barbara Rosenblat really makes it even better! ( )

I'm surprised how quickly I finished the 6 CDs just driving around doing errands. The Mrs. Pollifax books are a pleasant diversion, perfect for passing time in the car. ( )

KIndergarten spying. "A Palm for Mrs. Pollifax", one of the earlier in the series, was much more fun. ( )

Mrs. Pollifax is once again called upon to perform her Innocent Tourist act, but this time it's not a CIA job. It's for a friend she met through the CIA, John Sebastian Farrell. Farrell is friends with an Iraqi author who wrote subversive allegorical novels critical of the Saddam Hussein regime, and the author is now dead. Farrell was asked to smuggle his last novel out of the Middle East through Jordan, and Farrell thought it would be much better if he had Mrs. P. as cover...

This is one of the later Pollifaxes and not quite as good as the early ones. The setting of Jordan is interesting, especially the contrast between the modern city and the desert life of the Bedouin. I also liked the trip to the city of Petra (complete with mental soundtrack from the Indiana Jones movies). But it doesn't have quite the same zip as the earlier installments do, and it can get a bit repetitive (Bishop's love of kitchens) and predictable (heck, one of the villains is revealed in the publisher's blurb). The book also contains spoilers for A Palm for Mrs. Pollifax and Mrs. Pollifax and the Lion Killer, so if you have not read those yet, beware. There is also a slight spoiler for Mrs. Pollifax and the Hong Kong Buddha.

If you're a completist, you may want to read this. If you haven't started the series, don't start here. Start with Palm or Lion Killer, or with The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax, the first in the series. ( )

Unsophisticated but fun, the Mrs. Pollifax books are quick, easy reads. I enjoyed this one more than the previous two in the series.
Chosen as a decoy (because she is so good at looking like an 'innocent tourist') to accompany her old friend Farrell to Jordan, here Mrs. Pollifax, as usual, gets swept up in events more dangerous than anticipated. The mild risk of their intended mission (secretly picking up a manuscript from a dissident Iraqi author) is compounded when the innocent tourist 'disguise' leads the two into a web of murder, terrorism and kidnapping... ( )