Penelope
Penelope Hastings was not unlike many of her wealthy socialite contemporaries. Her husband was first vice-president of the City Federal Bank of New York. She had two lovely, well-mannered children in boarding schools. She had servants. She had original creations from Givenchy. She visited a psychiatrist daily. She went to all the right dinner and cocktail parties. All in all her life was a perfect bore. But Penelope Hastings was not a woman without an imagination, so she found a most unique and intriguing pastime. She became an accomplished thief. It all began at a very formal dinner party, when she could not resist separating her hostess from a diamond bracelet, and culminated the afternoon Penelope relieved the newest branch of her husband's bank of $52,000.
The investigation that followed was more than Police Commissioner John Comaday or Assistant to the D.A. Larry Cohen were remotely prepared to handle. The longer the case lasted, the more confused it became, for none of the pieces seemed to fit together in any sensible pattern. The greatest problem the forces of justice had to contend with was Penelope. She, of course, was merely the naïve wife of the distraught vice president of the City Federal Bank of New York, but somehow she seemed to have an uncanny notion of who the criminal was...
The admiring audience for E.V. Cunningham has steadily increased, and those who enjoyed his previous novels, Shirley, Alice, Sylvia, Phyllis, and Lydia will delight in the humorous and clever escapades of his latest heroine in PENELOPE.
from the dust jacket of the 1965 Doubleday first edition
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