Book Report: The Unexpected Mrs Pollifax

This book is the first in a series of spy thrillers. And you're thinking, "But Larry, you never like thrillers. Why did you read this book?" One of my relatives mentioned these books at some family gathering. The schtick is promising: our heroine works for the CIA... but she's a grandmother from New Brunswick. When trapped and imprisoned by evil commies (not to be confused with good commies), a steel-jawed spy hero's instincts run towards a last desperate gun battle. But Mrs Pollifax is friendly and outgoing, and she instead talks with her jailers and soon they like her and... And if the novel had more of that, I might have liked it better. When Mrs. Pollifax defies the genre, I like this book; but that's because I don't like the genre. Unfortunately, the author knows which side her bread's buttered on, and the novel mostly follows spy novel conventions. Skillfully and all but... not my thing.