John Gomaday and Larry Cohen Books in Order

John Gomaday and Larry Cohen are the two central lawmen in this short E.V. Cunningham series. Gomaday is New York City's police commissioner, while Cohen is the first assistant district attorney in Manhattan. Their jobs put them at the meeting point of police work, prosecution, politics, and the social world of the city.

The series has only two novels, Penelope and Margie, so it is easy to read straight through. Each book uses a woman's name as its title and begins with a situation that looks like a personal scandal or a light social problem, then lets the legal and criminal stakes grow.

In Penelope, the city's authorities are drawn into an audacious criminal situation involving a woman whose behavior becomes impossible to ignore. The book has the feel of a caper, but Gomaday and Cohen must decide how much of what they are seeing is performance and how much is dangerous.

Margie takes an even more comic premise. An apparently ordinary young woman is mistaken for both a thief and an oil-rich countess, and the confusion puts her in real jeopardy. Gomaday and Cohen have to work through false identities, opportunists, and a case in which assumptions keep changing.

The tone is lighter than the Masao Masuto mysteries, though the risks are still real. Fast uses the pair's official roles to give the books a view of New York from the inside, including the pressure to solve a public problem without making an already chaotic situation worse.

Two officials. One very messy city.

These novels work well for readers who like vintage crime stories with banter, mistaken identity, and a little social satire. Read Penelope first, then Margie, to follow Gomaday and Cohen in publication order. The books are brief, self-contained, and a different side of Fast's work under the Cunningham name.