Customer Reviews

Death Lights a Candle: An Asey Mayo Cape Cod Mystery

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Prudence Whitsby and Asey Mayo team up once again to get to the bottom of a murder on Cape Cod.

While her niece Betsey is off on her honeymoon with Bill Porter, Prudence decides to accept an invitation from Rowena Kible to go out to her place on the Cape. It's March 1932, and it's cold, but at least it'll be time spent away from Boston. Upon their arrival, they are quickly summoned to the house-warming party at Adelbert Stires' new mansion across the street. But their host isn't there. And snow begins to fall -- serious snow. The small group of guests and accompanying servants are soon marooned, along with local handyman Asey Mayo, who just stopped by to check in on them. Bert Stires shows up on foot, cold and wet, and more than 24 hours after he left Boston. Everyone is so thankful to see him and to bundle him up that they ask no questions about his travails. That's too bad, because the next morning they find him in his locked bedroom, dead. He'd been poisoned with arsenic, and recently, too. How could this have happened?

Enter Asa Alden "Asey" Mayo, who once again takes charge of an impromptu investigation. Since we first met him in THE CAPE COD MYSTERY, Asey's been elected to the office of sheriff. So while his reputation precedes him, his badge now gives him some authority. But as the snow drifts up to the windows, the plot thickens. No one seems to want to tell the truth, and just about every occupant of Stires' house had reason to kill the guy. The group includes some of Stires' business associates, long-time friends, servants, and even a young girl recently placed under his guardianship. Asey is constantly confounded by the ways of the rich. "I never saw folks like these. No, sir. I'm beginnin' to b'lieve that if they wanted to go from Boston to Los Ang'les, they'd take a boat an' get there by way of Greenland an' South Africa. Nope, they ain't what you'd call simple folks." Still, he and Prue (again acting as his faithful assistant) try their best to figure out whose motive was strongest. This is indeed a tangled web.

Even though the threads are intricately woven here, the resolution of this particular episode didn't satisfy me as much as some found in other installments in the Asey Mayo series. I thought the final denouement was a bit weak. But the book does provide entertainment for avid mystery readers, who afterward might find themselves studying candles a bit more intensely than they ever did before.

This second novel in the old Asey Mayo Cape Cod series is a better, more tightly written novel than the first in the series, The Cape Cod Mystery. The plot is less contrived, but only somewhat. A satisfying locked-room cozy.

The Countryman edition is much easier on aging eyes than the mass-market paperbacks.

I recently ordered this book, thinking I was to receive a copy with the cover pictured on this page. However, the book this page is about, is of the 1989 copy by Foul Play Press, an imprint of The Countryman Press. Whereas the book cover pictured, belongs to the 2005 copy of Countryman Press. In case you prefer the cover pictured here, instead of a gruesome skull with melted wax running down it's sides, make sure you find the actual 2005 copy of this book.