What do most women do when they reach their early forties, when their children are at college and their husbands wealthy and successful? Sit at home and arrange the flowers or work for charity, or live for the evenings, no doubt. But Penelope Hastings did none of those things. The evenings were no longer worth waiting for now that her husband, Vice-President of the City Federal Bank of New York, had become pompous and tiresome; and flowers and chocolates were just not enough.

No. The gentle charming Penelope, who looked so young for her age, devised a far more novel way of injecting excitement into the monotony of her upper-class life. She decided to robe her husband's bank.

Her adventure involved her with Dr Gregory Mannix, her text-book psychoanalyst, with Messrs Cohen and Comaday of New York police and with the mysterious Sadaba of haute couture fame.

Penelope's career of organised crime makes a riveting and a comic tale. She is a splendid creation and well worthy of her place in the gallery of heroines so far presented by Mr Cunningham - Sylvia, Alice, Shirley, Lydia and Phyllis.