When a starry-eyed model walks off with a powerful woman’s mink coat and diamond bracelet, New York City’s police race to find her—before gangsters get her first Margie Beck has always been a magnet for calamity. When she accidentally walks off with a $17,000 mink coat and the $90,000 bracelet contained within it, she finds herself again at the center of an exciting—and possibly deadly—criminal plot. As the city’s police search for Margie, its criminal class joins the hunt. With only the help of her boyfriend and a clever dress designer, Margie must outsmart her pursuers before it’s too late. This will be a thrilling day, but it could be Margie’s last.
EV Cunningham is a pseudonym used by author: Howard Fast, and under that name he wrote 21 mystery novels plus two others, one under his own name and one using another pseudonym Walter Ericson.
He was educated at George Washington High School, graduating in 1931. He attended the National Academy of Design in New York before serving with the Office of War Information between 1942 and 1943 and the Army Film Project in 1944.
He became war correspondent in the Far East for 'Esquire' and 'Coronet' magazines in 1945. And after the war he taught at Indiana University, Bloomington, in the summer of 1947, a year in which he was imprisoned for contempt of Congress, concerning his communistic views.
He became the owner of the Blue Heron Press in New York in 1952, a position he held until 1957. And he was the founder of the World Peace Movement and a member of the World Peace Council from 1950 to 1955 and was later a member of the Fellowship for Reconciliation. In 1952 he was an American Labour Party candidate for Congress for the 23rd District of New York.
He received a great many awards between 1933 and 1967.
He married Bette Cohen in 1937 and they had one son and one daughter.
Under his own name he wrote 35 works of fiction plus a variety of history and critical works, short stories, plays and a screenplay, 'The Hessian' (1971) plus a book of verse with William Gropper.
He died died at his home in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, on 12 March 2003.
Falling somewhere between P.G. Wodehouse and Damon Runyon, this tale of rag-trade renegades, European militants and mistaken identities is fun but gossamer-thin. At just 187 pages, it’s slightly longer than its narrative requires, mainly on account of the goofing around that Cunningham relies on to generate humour. Mostly the goofing around works, but it robs the piece of any real tension and makes for a bit of a damp squib ending.