The Only Good Secretary by Jean Potts

This 'absorbing mystery' features a cross-section of real people everyone knows. Jean Potts is good at this, but ordinary people do not make an exciting mystery.

Monday morning, Louise entered the magazine office where she is editorial assistant to her energetic boss Harry Dudgeon (nicknamed High). Opening the windows to let in the fresh New York air, they find his secretary Fern lying on the twelfth-floor parapet, stabbed in the chest with scissors. She must have been there all weekend. The arriving staff are horrified: fastidious proofreader Gladys, the question and answer man W.J., perpetually hungover Archie, and Donna from the art department - her boss Max suddenly disappearing. Max and Fern had planned to spend that weekend together but had a fight. Heartbroken, they find he gassed himself in his oven. The police are called in to determine where everyone was Friday night - difficult when there was an office party down the hall. Fern shared an apartment with a woman and her teenage son after she left her husband George, a teacher in Michael's school. They had been robbed recently and blamed their maid Ethel. Fern was receiving threatening phone calls at work, and someone rifles through the office. Louise and Dudgeon turn amatuer detective to figure it out themselves. What they find is damning across the board, but no concrete suspect.

Potts does hold back the culprit until the very end, but this meanders too much to be exciting. Competently written and characterized, but that spark of interest is missing.

The Only Good Secretary is available in Ebook format.

Jean Potts first mystery Go, Lovely Rose (1954) won the Mystery Writers of America award for Best First Mystery of the Year.

1965 / Paperback / 160 pages