Go, Lovely Rose / The Evil Wish (Stark House Mystery Classics) - Softcover

Potts, Jean

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1944520651 ISBN 13: 9781944520656

Publisher: Stark House Press, 2019

Synopsis

GO, LOVELY ROSEThey find Mrs. Henshaw at the bottom of the cellar stairs with her neck broken. Everyone assumes she has fallen. But when Rose’s sister appears on the scene, she immediately begins to cry murder. And she’s right! Young Hartley is the obvious suspect. Mrs. Henshaw had been his and his sister Rachel’s housekeeper for many years, and there was no love lost between any of them. In fact, no one in town really liked Rose Henshaw. Her ex-husband, Francie, certainly knew how evil she could be—she ruined his life. The rest of them were simply afraid of her: young Dr. Craig, the newcomer in town; and Bix, Hartley’s teenage girlfriend; her father, Hugh Bovard, editor of the local paper; and his shattered wife, Althea, still mourning the loss of her son. They all hated Rose Henshaw for one reason or another—but who hated her enough to push her down the stairs? THE EVIL WISHEver since Marcia and Lucy were little girls, they would hide in the basement of their brownstone and listen in on their father’s conversations. But now they are in their 30s, still living with their domineering father, and one day they eavesdrop on a very portentous revelation. Their widowed father intends to marry his secretary, give her all his money, and let her kick his daughters out of their house. In their anger and outrage, Marcia and Lucy hatch a plot to murder him. When their father and his secretary are involved in a fatal car crash, their plans prove unnecessary. But what are they to do with their murder scheme and the residual guilt—particularly when the aborted plot develops a life of its own?

About this title

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.

Review

Quite a performance for a first novel ... Potts has a writing style both colloquial and sophisticated with a talent for turning phrases that smack of real truth. --J. F. Norris, Pretty Sinister Books

The always interesting Jean Potts explores a curious notion in The Evil Wish that a murder planned but not committed must somehow force its way into being, even with a different victim...a fine, quietly chilling novel. --New York Times

Jean Potts has added another superb novel to her collection of top-notch suspense and mystery stories... the rising tension, and its solution, hold the reader to the very last word. --Baton Rouge Sunday Advocate

Booklist starred review:

Stark House's ongoing project—reissuing high-class crime fiction from a vanished time—strikes gold with this double-decker release of two fine novels by the nearly forgotten Potts. Go, Lovely Rose dates from 1954; The Evil Wish from 1962. Employing techniques both classic and contemporary, the two tales share the meticulous build-up of tension typical of the Golden Age and the modern tendency to use a crime as an excuse to explore the lives affected. The "Rose" of the first novel is dead when the narrative begins, a crumpled heap with her skull bashed in. There's some detective work here—keep an eye on that headband—but Potts uses rich, vivid language to examine the damage Rose did to a handful of people with their own secrets. If Hitchcock had written a novel, it would have been similar to The Evil Wish, with its study of the corroding effects of guilt. Two sisters plot to murder their father and his fiancée. Turns out they don't have to, but their obsessions—What did the neighbors overhear? What's in that diary?—lead them to near madness. And real crime. Two masterpieces here.

— Don Crinklaw

About this edition

• Publisher: Stark House Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1944520651
• ISBN 13: 9781944520656
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 304