Mrs. Pollifax and the Whirling Dervish

May 1, 1990
This spirited mystery, the ninth featuring garden club matron and part-time secret agent Emily Pollifax shows the kindly grandmother at her steel-edged and resourceful best. Her superiors in the Atlas Group (an unofficial branch of the CIA) have dispatched Emily to Morocco to provide a cover for another of their agents, Max Janko. Emily will pose as Max's aunt to make the pair look like tourists, while in reality they will be trying to identify all seven agents in order to ferret out the mole who has recently infiltrated the Atlas network. Anticipating a relatively serene journey through picturesque Moroccan villages with an agreeable companion, Emily is dismayed to find Janko insufferably hostile. Worse, he intends to kill her. By the time the real Janko shows up, a murder has occurred, and Emily and her inexperienced companion are running for their lives from one dusty hamlet to the next, desperately trying to find the informer and save the rest of the network. Gilman's latest is well crafted, richly detailed and eminently suspenseful.