Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station

Mrs. Pollifax is off to China in her sixth assignment for the CIA, operating as cover for another agent, unknown to her, that is also in her tour group, and whose mission is to rescue a dissident engineer from a labor camp and smuggle him out of the country. As our gradmotherly heroine gets to know her fellow travelers, she remains watchful, curious as to who this other agent might be. Little does she imagine however, that more than one of the group is hiding a dangerous secret...

I greatly enjoyed Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station when I first read it years ago, as an adolescent, and I greatly enjoyed it upon this recent reread. I seem to be revisiting the entire series, perhaps as a comfort read during this unexpected worldwide crisis show more and quarantine. What better time to become an armchair traveler? And what better and more entertaining way to do it, than to follow along on Mrs. Pollifax's exciting, humorous and heartwarming trips to various countries, at the behest of Mr. Carstairs of the CIA? Here we have the usual coterie of interesting secondary characters - top marks here to Iris and Peter! - as well as the fascinating geographic locales. Since I was a young girl, I've wanted to visit the tomb of the First Emperor, so that aspect of the story is always quite interesting for me. I was struck, on this reread, by the fact that the trip is to Xinjiang, and features the Uygher people. Published in 1983, it describes a China that is far less developed than it is today, a China that had not yet begun persecuting its Uygher minority with the zeal that it does today. It's rather sad to think that, rather than progressing on issues of human rights and environmental protection, China has actually gotten quite worse in some respects. Leaving these rather melancholy musings aside, this is one I would wholeheartedly recommend to all readers who have enjoyed previous installments of the series. show less

Emily Pollifax does it again -- oh no, no spoilers! I don't mean whether her assignment was a triumph or not (use your imagination). I mean that I was once again riveted on every page.

I so appreciate these gutsy tour guides to parts exotic and unknown, the tidbits of history, the depth of how she makes me feel like I am really there. And what fun it is to follow along on Google Maps! I especially appreciate Google's contributors' photographs of the regions that are included.

I also savor the craft that Ms. Gilman displays in her character development and plotting. Great stuff! Not earth-shaking; not literary brilliance. But solid, HIGHLY entertaining adventure, and one of my favorite characters in fiction these days.

Thank you Ms. show more Gilman, for a much-needed, intelligent escape. show less

Mrs. Pollifax is useful to the CIA precisely because she is not a professional agent. She seems like a harmless, average middle aged woman. However, she is extremely perceptive, she can mask her emotions, and she has a brown belt in karate. She'll use all of these skills on her latest assignment. The CIA needs to get a man out of a work camp in a remote part of China. Mrs. Pollifax will join a tour group and will make contact with a local who knows the location of the work camp. One of her fellow travelers will not be who he or she seems to be, but will also be working for the CIA.

This book was written less than a decade after Mao's death, and not long after China reopened to Western tourism. The Cold War hadn't yet ended, either. The show more exotic locations in this series are part of its appeal, and the setting for this book is especially pleasing. The only odd note for me was the composition of the tour group. Although it doesn't seem to have been marketed as a singles tour, all of Mrs. Pollifax's fellow travelers were singles. There wasn't a couple or a family among them.

This isn't a typical cozy mystery series. It's more of a cozy spy thriller. It's a great series for armchair travelers. show less

A fun, cozy mystery taking us to China where Mrs. Pollifax must help extricate an important person from a prison camp later to be sneaked out of the country under the very noses of both the Chinese and the Russians. And why does Mrs. Pollifax put herself through these wild adventures at the age when most of us can not even get off the couch? She says "it was this experience of altered selfness that was the meaning behind all of her own adventures: a sense of bringing to each moment every strength and resource hidden inside of herself as well as the discovery of new ones: a sense of life being so stripped to its essence that trivia and inconsequentials fell away."

It’s hard to know which book of the series I like best, so far. The descriptions of China, the characters so real with some likable and some not so likeable, the subtle weaving of mystery and adventure leave me thinking this is right up there. Fast read!

I liked that there is the added element of Mrs. Pollifax's personal life. While the adventure was good, as usual, and Mrs. Pollifax was resourceful and clever as is her wont, the life and death nature of her adventures was underlined by 'what she had to lose' now that Cyrus is in her life. Nice way to change things up a bit.

It's 1983, and access to China is still very limited for outsiders. But Mrs. Pollifax, grandmother and secret agent for the CIA, is being sent in by Carstairs and Bishop. Her mission: to help another agent make contact with a Chinese prisoner and get him out of the country before the KGB gets to him first. Fortunately, a tour group provides a good cover story, and Mrs. Pollifax makes the perfect tourist. Here's hoping she will return to tell the tale.

This installment takes a bit longer to set up than other books in the series, but it is enjoyable to see all the tour group members interact and try to guess along with Mrs. Pollifax who her contact is (she has not been told beforehand). The second half is very tense and the suspense makes show more it almost too painful to read on, but of course you read on anyway because you have to know what happens next. And there are doses of the familiar: the Carstairs and Bishop scene where they give her her mission follows the usual template, and Mrs. Pollifax is her unflappable and unexpected self throughout. Recommended if you've already started reading the series. show less