Lightning Strikes Twice

by Jean Potts

Slouching, gum-chewing know-it-all, convinced that her mother's friendship with Mr. Stanley was more than it seemed...
that Aunt Nell's hysterics hid a family scandal...
That Win Covey's strange death was murder...
and that only she could expose the killer...
After all, it is little Harriet who knows more about why lightning strikes twice.

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1962

About the author

Jean Potts was born on November 17, 1910, in St. Paul, Nebraska. After she graduated from Nebraska Wesleyan University, Potts became first a teacher and then a journalist, later moving to New York, which she fell in love with during a brief visit. It was there that Potts started her writing career, beginning with a mainstream novel Someone to Remember in 1943 and stories for magazines like Collier s, McCall s, Cosmopolitan and Redbook. After the success of her first mystery novel, Go, Lovely Rose (which won the Edgar Award in 1954), Potts concentrated on crime fiction, eventually writing fourteen mystery novels, translated into over seven languages. Though never made, The Evil Wish (an Edgar runner-up in 1963) was optioned for a film with Barbara Stanwyck and Sir Ralph Richardson. Potts died in New York City on November 10, 1999.

Reviews

[Andy Weston · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harmless fun.

[dmayr · Rating 3 out of 5]

Win Covey tried to kill himself, so Evan Covey goes back to Fontenelle to find out what was happening with the Covey clan. Little Harriet, obstinate and exasperating, refuses to believe her father would kill himself, so Evan tries to investigate and in the process, encounters gossip, illicit affairs and small-town scandals. Potts' writing conveys that sense of menace much like in Ursula Curtiss' novels, but with better dialogue and plot progression.