Emily Pollifax is leading a very full life: garden club, karate, yoga - and a little spying now and then. This time the CIA sends her to a famous Swiss health resort where the world's intelligence agents have gathered. The mission: to track down some missing plutonium. Just enough to make a small atom bomb.

She is good with people - and good at sniffing out their secrets. But it is not until she becomes enchanted with Robin, the young jewel thief, that her adventure really begins.

Armed with only an open mind and a little karate, Mrs Pollifax is the most unlikely and lovable of international spies.