Double Jeopardy

This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design. Double Jeopardy begins with Peter Thatcher, a quiet Ithaca druggist who stands accused of murdering his wife and cannot quite explain how his life reached this point. Speaking in a tense, confessional voice, he traces his path from shy, lonely youth and abandoned medical ambitions to the small business he built beside Lake Cayuga, then into a nightmare shaped by suspicion, courtroom logic, and public certainty. What emerges is both a psychological drama and a sharp critique of modern justice, where circumstantial evidence can harden into guilt. At the center of Peter's story is Anita, the beautiful woman whose arrival upends his orderly world and draws him away from his blunt, wise mentor, Doc Turnbull. As Peter falls into longing and jealousy, Anita's involvement with the admired Doctor Carpenter deepens, gossip swirls through town, and hope and humiliation alternate in painful turns. The novel follows Peter through obsession, marital strain, and the widening gap between his dreams and Anita's ambitions, building a suspenseful legal and human drama marked by irony, dread, and emotional unease.