Pollifax fans rejoice! The courageous Connecticut matron whose prize-winning geraniums are second only to her dazzling defense maneuvers is back. Hailed an “enchantress” by The New York Times, Mrs. Pollifax is the CIA’s most indispensable “bloodhound” and *as to be expected *she’s hot on the track, stealthily sniffing out some major skullduggery.

This time she’s 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, recently murdered in an Iraqi prison. Allegedly fiction, the script encodes the shocking truth of Saddam Hussein’s reign.

Allah willing, Farrell is to rendezvous near Amman with a man called Ibrahim, who will deliver the manuscript. All Mrs. P. has to do is look as much like a tourist as possible to deflect suspicion from her “cousin,” Farrell.

But hardly are the two airborne when the coils of Middle Eastern intrigue begin to unwind. Mrs. Pollifax’s seatmate is not the affable Arab businessman he seems and the little carved plaque he secretly stashes in her carry-on bag is not a mere souvenir. It is not imagination that persuades Mrs. P. that wherever they go she and Farrell are followed, even to the old castle where Farrell is to meet the mysteriously elusive Ibrahim.

To elude their pursuers in such a politically volatile country isn’t easy. But Mrs. P. takes her challenges straight up *and this one may be our genteel heroine’s stiffest yet. . . .