A Zany - Yet Sensible - Heroine Sleuths Her Way Into Danger and Romance

Stolen Goods is mystery, comedy, and romance, and spotlights more of the signature geek characters at which Clarence Budington Kelland so thoroughly excelled - because it takes one to know one.

“Shenanigans!” - the word often chosen by loquacious Sherry Madigan, this time to describe what was going on in the Linen Department at Prothero’s, the colossal metropolitan department store where she worked. Of course, Sherry was small potatoes at Prothero’s, being only a nerdy copywriter in Advertising and not entitled to an opinion.

But Sherry put her whole self into a job and prided herself on her acute powers of observation. And she had a gift for standing on the spot where things were popping at the precise moment they popped.

Which was why she happened to be around when a body was found in the fitting room, and why she overheard the cashier in the Linen Department sobbing hysterically: “I'm next” - over and over again. And the girl was right - hers was the next body Sherry found.

At first, no one paid any attention to Sherry’s theories about the murder. But gradually, as the situation became more and more sinister, her deductions began to make more and more sense. Sherry was very much in the way.

Things started to boil over just at the moment Sherry began to look at assistant buyer Roger Newsome with interest and, being an autodidactic geek, checked out a book on relationships and romance with some eye-opening, 1955-style ideas on how to attract a man.