In the first appearance of Mrs. Pollifax, Emily leaves New Brunswick, N.J., travels to Langley, V.A. and persuades a skeptical CIA recruitment officer that she is the best person for a job in Mexico. It's a simple courier job, no real spy work. Soon, however, she finds herself kidnapped, taken to Albania and imprisoned in the company of the mysterious John Sebastian Farrell.

After facing down hijackers on a flight to the Middle East and saving the lives of the passengers on board, a young American woman steps off the plane in Damascus in a blaze of celebrity and disappears. The CIA believes Amanda Pym was kidnapped, possibly murdered. Masquerading as Amanda Pym's worried aunt, Mrs. Pollifax begins her determined search, slipping through Damascus's crooked streets and crowded souks . . . and trekking deep into the desert....

Mrs. Pollifax's approaching vacation to Thailand is given a spin when Mr. Carstairs of the CIA hires her to pick up a small package

In her ninth adventure, all Mrs. Pollifax has to do is help a bumbling CIA agent confirm the identities of seven undercover informants in Morocco. A simple assignment. But right away, things go wrong. The first informant is murdered just after Mrs. P. identifies him in Fez. Worse, she has the frightening sensation that her associate is not who or what he says he is.

"Mrs. Pollifax is on loan to her retired CIA friend, Farrell. Her bag lady act is the first phase of a mission to the Middle East: to smuggle out of Jordan the final manuscript of the dissident Iraqi novelist Dib Assen, who was recently murdered in an Iraqi prison. Allegedly fiction, the script encodes the shocking truth of Saddam Hussein's reign."--BOOK JACKET. "Allah willing, Farrell is to rendezvous near Amman with a man called Ibrahim, who will...

While waiting for a view of her night-blooming cereus, the mild-seeming Mrs. Pollifax received urgent orders for a daring mission to aid an escape. Soon, the unlikely-looking international spy was sporting a beautiful new hat that hid eight forged passports....

After writing a quick note to her husband, Mrs. Pollifax is off to Hong Kong to rescue Sheng Ti. The young agent she had successfully smuggled out of mainland China earlier finds himself involved with an alleged double agent.