Penelope has always done her best to be a good wife, a good mistress, a good mother - and a good magistrate.

Today she is more conscious that usual of the thinness of the thread that distinguishes good from bad, the law-abiding from the criminal.

Sitting in court, hearing a short, sad case of indecent exposure and a long, confused theft, she finds herself examining her own sex life (how would all that sound in court?) her own actions and intentions while she observes the defendants in the dock.This novel is a tour-de-force , an ingeniously constructed novel in which Nina Bawden counterpoints public appearance with private behaviour in her heroine, Penelope.

The result is a marvellous picture of a not always admirable but engagingly complex and very human heroine.

As always, Bawden offers a compelling story, sharply witty and beautifully observed.

But it is also an honest and provocative book tracing the divergent courses of morality and justice, and uncomfortably posing, as Penelope does of herself, the question: who and what is a good woman?