This year, in honor of our March 2013 Women’s History Month speaker Dr. Sara Paretsky, we will focus on women mystery writers. We have included in our list some classic titles and some less well-known. We are focusing on novels with female detectives.

The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax

Emily Pollifax has returned to her quiet, retired life in Brunswick, New Jersey. Yet she brief sojourn as a CIA courier was an exciting highlight to remember as she works at the hospital, speaks at the garden club, and attends church. She reads the newspaper one Sunday morning about a strange occurrence in Istanbul, Turkey. A woman is being sought after being kidnapped from the British Consulate.

Shortly after reading the story, her telephone rings. It is Mr. Carstairs at the CIA. She is needed for another courier job. To her astonished delight, she is swept out and off to Turkey within an hour. Her duty is to meet the same woman at a prearranged spot and hand over a passport and money to come to the United States.

Since this is only her second job for the CIA, Carstairs still has to realize that when Emily Pollifax gets involved, jobs rarely go as simply as planned. It may not be her fault, but she soon finds herself having her passport taken by the Turkish police and detained until the mysterious woman is turned in. Then she has a body dumped in her lap. Soon she has to avoid the Turkish police, the international spies, the assassins, and anyone who is threatening the escape of the woman Mrs. Pollifax is supposed to rescue.