Go, Lovely Rose / the Evil Wish

Go, Lovely Rose won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1954, and The Evil Wish was an Edgar runner-up in 1963. Both novels have been out of print for over 50 years, and are long overdue for rediscovery.

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.