Tracy is a successful bank-worker in Philadelphia, engaged to a wealthy heir, whose child she is carrying. Then her mother commits suicide, after being scammed by the New Orleans Mafia and left in debt. Tracy gets a gun to frighten the scammer, Joe Romano, into admitting her mother’s innocence, but he tries to rape her and is wounded in the struggle. Her attorney convinces her that she will get a much shorter sentence if she pleads guilty, but the judge sentences her to fifteen years to Southern Louisiana Penitentiary for Women, and she realises that the judge and the attorney are both working for Romano’s boss, mafia Don Anthony Orsatti. As she goes to jail, her employer and her fiancé abandon her and the unborn child, which she miscarries under the horrendous abuse she suffers from her prison mates. Tracy now decides to avenge herself on all the men who have ruined her life. Granted an official pardon for saving the life of the warden's daughter, she uses her banking knowledge to divert large sums into Romano’s account, making it look as though he was planning to skip the country, and Orsatti imprisons him for his apparent betrayal. Then she gets the boyfriend of one of her jail-mates to plant evidence in the attorney’s home, making it look as though he was cheating Orsatti at cards, and Orsatti teaches him a lesson too. While the judge is in Russia, she sends him coded letters that implicate him as a spy, and he is sentenced to fourteen years of hard labor in Siberia. She stalks her ex-fiancé and his new wife, but decides that they look so bored and unhappy with each other that no further punishment is needed. With a criminal record, however, her career is over, and she reluctantly slips into crime, presently finding that she enjoys stealing, especially from those who deserve to be stolen from. In the course of a colorful crime spree all over Europe with FBI, INTERPOL and Federal Police stalking, she falls in love with one of her co-conspirators, Jeff Stevens, and they plan to take their winnings and live the law-abiding life in Brazil. But on the plane, she finds herself sitting next to wealthy top criminal Maximilian Pierpont, who shows a strong interest in her, and we are left wondering if she will try to steal from him too.
Adaptation
The novel was adapted into the three-part TV miniseriesIf Tomorrow Comes in 1986, starring Madolyn Smith and Tom Berenger. The Malayalam film22 Female Kottayam was inspired by this novel. The film was remade into Tamil as Malini 22 Palayamkottai which itself was dubbed into Telugu as Ghatana.
Sequels
Author Tilly Bagshawe has written two novels featuring the Tracy Whitney character: Sidney Sheldon's Chasing Tomorrow and Sidney Sheldon's Reckless.
