Customer Reviews

Cape Cod Mystery

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This 1931 book was an auspicious beginning for one of the most popular mystery story writers of the 1930's and beyond, Phoebe Atwood Taylor (1909 -1976). It was also the first of the Asey Mayo series, her most successful, in which a true son of the Cape is cast as a homespun, amateur Sherlock Holmes. I was delighted to see these still in print as is her Leonidas Witherall series.(I have heard the 1944 radio broadcasts of this one, starring one of the most distinguished American actors of the day, Walter Hampden.)
The Mayo series is in a long American tradition of the down-home philosopher-man of all trades-wit, whose acute knowledge of human nature and shrewd approach to people-life-events far outpaces the never too bright professionals whether in outwitting skulduggery or freeing the innocent in courts of law. (Will Rogers typified that archetype on stage, film and radio, as well as in newspapers and magazines, until his untimely death in 1935 in an air crash).
I would look on this book as the introduction to the rest in the series, bringing on stage most of the key continuing player and showing us the authors style and skill. It is an enjoyable beginning to the long series although Taylor is not yet at the top of her form. It should provide a good light read for most who indulge themselves in what today are called cozy mysteries. The plot is adequate for its purpose which is to serve as the clothes line on which are hung the customs of the Cape, its characters, and the authors wit. Having been addicted to these some in the late 30's and 40's, I was pleased to see that they have weathered several generations so well.

Asey Mayo is a jack-of-all-trades, who becomes an amateur sleuth after the arrest of his friend and boss, Bill Porter. The latter is arrested for the murder of the writer Dale Sanborn, whose history turns out to be different than was supposed while he was still among the living. The novel shows life at Cape Cod in the early 1930s from the viewpoint of Prudence Whitsby, an upper-class spinster who is a resident on the Cape. Interesting and fun, but don't expect Nobel Prize material.