Mrs. Pollifax is comfort food. That's not an insult - I mean it the way I mean it when I say a wool blanket and a pot of Earl Grey are exactly what you need on a wet Oregon Tuesday. This isn't the genre I usually occupy. My podcast is called The Witching Hour for a reason. But I've been slowly working through the Pollifax series on my lunch breaks at the library, and this one landed on a week when I genuinely needed something that wasn't trying to destroy me emotionally. So. Here we are.
A Retired New Jersey Grandmother Is Doing Espionage in Hong Kong and You Will Accept This
The premise remains delightful and slightly absurd in the best way: Emily Pollifax, CIA operative, grandmother, devoted gardener, has barely settled into married life with Cyrus when she's pulled back into the field. Hong Kong. Missing agent. Buddhist statues that are probably not just Buddhist statues. Gilman never lost the thread of what makes this series work - Emily's complete, cheerful refusal to be diminished by her age, her gender, or the frankly dangerous situations she keeps walking into with her sensible shoes and her genuine warmth for everyone around her.
But here's where I'll be honest with you the way I'd be honest with a friend: this one isn't peak Pollifax. The last third loses her a bit - the POV starts wandering to other characters, and when you're here specifically for Emily's particular brand of unflappable competence, that absence is noticeable. It's like ordering your favorite dish and finding out the kitchen ran out of one of the main ingredients halfway through. Still good. Not quite the thing you came for. The ending also lands harder and more abruptly than I expected for this series - there's a darkness to it that felt slightly out of tune with the cozy spy energy Gilman usually maintains. Not unwelcome, exactly. Just jarring.
Barbara Rosenblat Understands the Assignment
Okay. This is where I need to talk about the narration, because it's doing significant heavy lifting here.
Rosenblat commits. That's rare. She's not reading this like a pleasant story - she's performing it, which is the only correct approach. I was blown away by her performance in Deja Dead—same commitment, different kind of chill. Emily has a particular voice in her hands: warm, slightly wry, capable of conveying both genuine danger and gentle humor within the same paragraph. The Hong Kong characters get distinct treatment - there's real accent work happening, not the lazy approximation that makes me want to throw my earbuds across the room. It enriches the setting in a way that flat narration absolutely would not.
One weird technical note: apparently some listeners experienced moments where the audio seemed to freeze while narration continued, which sounds genuinely maddening. I didn't hit that in my copy, but worth knowing if you're easily derailed by technical hiccups.
At 6 hours 48 minutes, this is a lunch-break-and-commute book. I listened mostly in the library break room and on the drive home through the coast range, which - look, fog-draped Douglas firs are not the worst backdrop for a Hong Kong espionage story. There's something about the gray Pacific Northwest light that makes even cozy mysteries feel appropriately atmospheric.
Who This Is For (And Who Should Skip)
If you're already a Pollifax reader, you're listening regardless of what I say, and you should. It's not the strongest entry - most fans seem to agree on that - but it's still Emily, still Rosenblat, still worth your time. For a truly stellar Gilman, Palm for Mrs. Pollifax is an earlier gem that doesn't put a foot wrong.
If you're new to the series, don't start here. Start at the beginning. Let yourself fall in love with Emily properly before you get to one of the slightly uneven middle entries.
If you want horror, psychological dread, or anything that will make you sleep with the lights on - wrong podcast, wrong review, wrong book entirely. Come back when I'm covering something that'll ruin you. If you're after that spine-tingling dread, Haunted House might be more your speed—I still think about it when the lights go out.
But if you want a smart, funny older woman running espionage circles around people who underestimate her, narrated by someone who genuinely cares about the performance? Six hours and forty-eight minutes of exactly that.
