John Gomaday and Larry Cohen (EV Cunningham) Books in Order

John Gomaday and Larry Cohen make an unlikely but useful team at the top of New York's law-enforcement world. Gomaday is the city's police commissioner, used to the public pressure that comes with a scandal or a high-profile crime. Cohen is Manhattan's first assistant district attorney, which means he sees the legal dangers that can follow a bad arrest, a missing fact, or a story that gets out of hand.

The pair appears in just two E.V. Cunningham novels, Penelope and Margie. Both are quick, self-contained stories, and both begin with a woman caught in an extraordinary situation. The books have mystery and real peril, but they also make room for comic confusion, official headaches, and people who keep being mistaken for somebody else.

In Penelope, Gomaday and Cohen confront a case that looks at first like a strange public spectacle. A woman's actions draw attention across the city, and the two officials have to decide whether they are dealing with a clever game, a private crisis, or a crime with larger consequences. The plot moves like a caper, but the risk of getting it wrong remains serious.

Margie leans further into mistaken identity. Margie is an ordinary young woman who is taken for a thief and then for a wealthy oil heiress. The confusion draws in opportunists and makes her a target, leaving Gomaday and Cohen to work through changing names, changing motives, and a problem that has become much more dangerous than it first appeared.

New York gives the books their energy.

Fast uses Gomaday and Cohen's official positions to show how crime, publicity, and politics can collide. They have to solve the immediate problem while considering what the police can prove, what a prosecutor can use, and what chaos will follow if the story reaches the public in the wrong form. That gives the series a different feel from the quieter, more methodical Masao Masuto books.

The tone is breezier than a hard-boiled thriller, though neither novel is weightless. There are criminals, frightened people, and consequences behind the jokes. Gomaday and Cohen provide the steady center, one coming from the police side and the other from the law, as the cases become more complicated than their odd beginnings suggest.

Read Penelope first and Margie second. Together they offer a short vintage crime sequence for readers who enjoy New York settings, official problem-solvers, social mix-ups, and mysteries that know how to have a little fun.