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It is a typical Monday morning. At 7:30 a.m. sharp, the weekday routine begins in the Michaels’ home. The family members all get dressed and arrive in the kitchen by 7:30.
New Orleans is a city that is below sea level. If you are looking for water, you can dig a one or two-foot-deep hole on your property, and likely discover it. When a house has a basement, it normally is not underground.
While taking his daily morning walk Richard relives his first job, a paper route he acquired when he was 12 years old, and how he first met his wife, Connie. Her parents became one of his customers when she and Richard were 16 years old.
Ric Frances was born and resides in the Greater New Orleans area. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Communications and Broadcasting from Loyola University in New Orleans, and has spent his career in Radio and Television Broadcasting. He opened Frances Partners LLC in 1992. Just for fun Ric wrote many TV scripts based on TV series. Detective movies, TV shows, and novels have intrigued Ric for years. Having read exceptional writers like his favorite, the brilliant Agatha Christie, Ric was inspired to pen his own detective story.
View MoreHow good of a detective are you? As soon as you get into the book SNAP, there’s a kidnapping in New Orleans. Many suspects. Don’t just guess. Determine who the person(s) responsible is, how they did it and why. Means, motive, opportunity. Are you as clever as the kidnapper(s) and the best detective in the Southeast?
• You’ll live the book vicariously through the heroes
• Just when you think you know… BANG… another twist
• Psychological thriller, suspense, mystery, intrigue
• Clean. No cursing. No sex. Great for high schools and higher education
You always follow detective stories trying to determine who the criminal is. In Lightning Strikes Twice, just when you think you’ve figured who the kidnapper is, there’s a twist that makes you change your mind. This story involves a family of detectives who trust each other implicitly. This trailer for the book tells more about the plot and sheds light on the New Orleans setting of the story.
Two years ago, Billy Shears broke into Chris and Michelle Michaels’ home and kidnapped their niece, Cora, who had been playing with their daughter, Audrey. Richard Urbanax was assigned to the case because he was an excellent hostage negotiator and probably the best detective in the New Orleans Police Department. However, before Richard even got to the Michaels’ home, Billy Shears, while speeding, had an accident that killed both Cora and himself. Richard was convinced Billy had a partner; however, after not finding proof of it, he was ordered to close the case. Refusing to give up, Richard quit his job to pursue the case on his own, determined to bring the other kidnapper to justice. Now, two years later, Chris Michaels’ wife, Michelle, and their daughter have just been abducted. Chris and Russell (Chris’s brother and Cora’s father) insist the police let Richard help them find their family.
Richard has the assistance of three other people with his investigation—his children. His 15-year-old twin sons, Reid and Eric, are geniuses with advanced degrees. Their passion is developing high-tech devices. These devices are much more sophisticated than what is available to law enforcement but are not always legal. Hilly is Richard’s 18-year-old daughter; although not as intelligent as the twins, she is still extremely smart, earning her Bachelor of Criminology Degree at 17 and currently working toward her master’s degree. They want to start their own private investigator business with their father once he has solved Cora’s case. Will they be capable of rescuing Michelle and Audrey before the kidnapper’s deadline?
Lightning Strikes Twice: From the Urbanax Files is an intriguing 275-page crime drama by Ric Frances. This is the first book in this series and showcases the author’s gift of a vivid imagination, which is shown by the sophisticated gadgets the twins invent. His creativity represented my favorite aspect of the book. His prose is descriptive and easy to understand.
I also appreciate it is a family-friendly novel. There are quite a few stories available about private investigators solving crimes, but it is unusual for a story to have no profanity or sex and have a father and his children as the protagonists. It was an interesting and unique spin on routine crime dramas.
Richard had Hilly profile each of the suspects for practice for their private investigator business. Although this may cause mature readers to feel like it drags at times, it provides additional information and is especially useful for younger readers.
My least favorite part of the story is that not all the questions were answered by the end. Since this is the first in the series, at least one thread would likely be continued in the upcoming book. I don’t have a problem with that. However, when the crime was solved at the end of the novel, I went back and reread part of the book to make more sense out of it. If the actual kidnapping was described in more detail at the end of the story, it would clarify things. Plus, someone was drugged in the novel, and how that fits in was never explained. This surprised me as the author was excellent about explaining most of the book very carefully and, in fact, sometimes repeated information.
One other thing was confusing to me. The Urbanaxes lived in a huge three-story house; the basement was where the twins invented their expensive, high-tech gadgets. They even had an illegal private satellite. Richard worked as a detective, and that job wouldn’t make him rich. After leaving that job, he worked without pay to expose Cora’s kidnapper. Where was all the money coming from to pay for this house, fund these inventions, and raise three kids?
Because there were very few errors in the book, I feel it was professionally edited. Therefore, as this is an imaginative and intriguing crime drama, it achieves a rating of three out of four stars. One star is removed because of the unanswered questions. I believe readers in the young adults age group, especially if they love high-tech gadgets, would appreciate this mystery the most; however, more mature adults may also enjoy it.
“LIGHTNING STRIKES TWICE “ is an action-packed detective story full of mystery, suspense, and wit. There is a new twist in each chapter you read. 8-year old Audrey and her mother have been abducted. The main protagonist, retired detective Richard Urbanax, the best detective in Southeast Louisiana, has agreed to help catch to kidnapper before the hostages are harmed. A thrilling mystery is on its way to you as each page you turn reveals a new suspect. Are you as clever as the kidnapper(s)? Can you figure out Whodunit?
“Every time I thought I knew who the kidnappers were, I’d advance to the next chapter and change my mind. It’s a challenging book. I took the challenge, but I picked the wrong people.”
“As I read the book I was determined to figure out who the kidnappers were before the book told me, but so many people were suspicious for different reasons. Good luck. I guessed wrong.”
“The twins are funny, but very clever. Their inventions are cool and things that would be fun to use. I particularly like how well they work together to create inventions to help solve the kidnapping.”
“It’s a race against the clock as the four main characters, the Urbanax family, work to identify the kidnappers and find the hostages before they are harmed, while the husband and father tries to raise the ransom.”
“My favorite character is Hilly. She’s very smart and while she may not always agree with her father, eventually, she proves to everyone just how smart she is.”
“It’s a fast-paced book which grabs you by the throat in the first chapter, then uses wit and a bit of humor to pull you through as you meet each character and each suspect. It’s a terrific mystery. I felt like I was part of it.”
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