Mrs. Pollifax and the Hong Kong Buddha

This delightful performance by Barbara Rosenblat is now available on CD, and a fine thing it is. Rosenblat gives the redoubtable Emily Pollifax a slightly brittle quaver and an almost indetectable slushiness in the back teeth that perfectly conveys the speech of a woman of a certain age; Mrs. P's hearty new (but not young) husband, Cyrus, has a warm gravelly voice that calls up a once powerful and deeply trustworthy bear of a man. That's good for Emily when she gets herself kidnapped in Hong Kong by a pack of drug- smuggling terrorists trying to get the city back for Formosa, because it's Cyrus who ends up leading the pros in rescuing her. Mrs. Pollifax is a wonder, but no more than Ms. Rosenblat. B.G. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine