In response to a desperate SOS, Kadi Hopkirk flies to the African country of Ubangiba, where her childhood friend, Sammat, is soon to be crowned king. Mrs. Pollifax, reluctant to allow the girl to venture alone into what she fears may be grave danger, crashes the party.
On arrival, Kadi and Mrs. P. soon discover that Sammat has dangerous enemies. Rumors are springing up that he is a sorcerer who is responsible for a rash of shocking murders in which the victims appear to have been clawed to death by a lion. These crimes are especially terrifying because there are no lions in Ubangiba. So Mrs. Pollifax wades into the fray, hunting for the source of the bloody terrorism that threatens Sammat and Ubangiba - not to mention Kadi and Mrs. Pollifax. . . .
All Mrs. Pollifax wants on this spring day is the peace and quiet of her Connecticut greenhouse. Then she discovers that a young woman, Kadi Hopkirk, has been hiding in her junk closet for two days. Kadi spills out an improbable story - that since a chance meeting with a childhood friend she has been followed by persons unknown in a sinister van. She''s convinced that the henchmen inside are hellbent on finding her. A little experiment on Mrs. P''s part proves at least this part of the story correct.
Kadi soon confides the rest of the story - a close tie with an assassinated foreign president and an item in her possession that makes both her and our sleuth moving targets for - someone. When Mrs. P puts in a call for help to her old CIA crony Carstairs, he''s wrapped up in the kidnap of a wealthy financier. Before she knows it, what began as a dash for safety and a call for help expands into an assignment that leads to hair-trigger violence in exotic places.
The one and only Mrs. Emily Pollifax is a part-time CIA operative and full-time garden-clubbing grandmother from New Jersey. In this adventure, she is off to the Sicilian countryside on a daring mission to rescue John Sebastian Farrell, a former CIA comrade, who was shot while trying to track down a document that allegedly bears the signature of Julius Caesar. With the aid of Kate Rossiter, a feisty young CIA agent who happens to be vacationing there, Mrs. Pollifax and Farrell discover the truth about the Caesar document, and in the process reveal the identities of the members of a secret - and deadly - cartel.
A missing salami leads Mrs. Pollifax to a shocking discovery: a woman is hiding in her house. Even more unsettling is the revelation that ever since the young woman had a chance encounter with the heir to the throne of Ubangiba, she has been followed by deadly hitmen. What do these men want?
Seven weeks ago, a young American woman, Amanda Pym, faced down hijackers on board a flight to the Middle East and saved the lives of more than two hundred passengers. In a blaze of celebrity, she stepped off the plane in Damascus and was whisked away in a waiting car. Since then, NOTHING. The CIA believes she was kidnapped and murdered. Whose plans has the apparently ordinary young woman interfered with? The machinations of the mukhabarat, Syria's dreaded police? The schemes of cutthroat terrorists? Or has she simply gone into hiding? Masquerading as Amanda Pym's worried aunt, Mrs. Pollifax begins her determined search, slipping through Damascus' crooked streets and colorful, crowded souks, and trekking deep into the desert, hoping that rumor and whispers (which is all she has to go on) will lead her to the truth.
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.
A safari expedition in Zambia is the disguise Emily employs in order to locate a professional assassin among her fellow explorers. Along the way, she meets an extraordinary man named Cyrus.
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....
