The Asey Mayo Trio: Three Cape Cod Mysteries

Asey Mayo Cape Cod Mystery #21

by Phoebe Atwood Taylor

Contents:
• "The Third Murderer" On the third occasion of moving the old Snow house, a young woman's body turns up in a Dutch oven.
• "Murder Rides the Gale" The new teachers at Merton Hall, posh private girl's school, arrives dead in a carriage.
• "The Stars Spell Death" While on vacation, Asey encounters a very dead astronomer in a very up-to-date observatory.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction

250 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1943

About the author

Taylor is an American mystery author. She is best known for her Asey Mayo series, based in Cape Cod. She additionally wrote and published under the pen names Alice Tilton and Freeman Dana.

Phoebe Atwood Taylor, born in 1909 in Boston, Massachusetts, was the first member of her family to have been born off Cape Cod in more than 300 years. Upon graduating from Manhattan's Barnard College, she moved to Weston, Massachusetts, to pen her first work, The Cape Cod Mystery (1931), which was published when she was 22. The book was written while Taylor was caring for her invalid aunt, Alice Tilton (the source of one of her two publishing pseudonyms, the other being Freeman Dana). Taylor was one of the first mystery writers to give a regional and rural rather than urban focus during the time known as the "golden age" of mystery writing (1918 - 1939). Gone with the Wind's author, Margaret Mitchell, was a great fan of the Asey Mayo series, and encouraged Taylor to pack the books with Cape Cod detail. In all, she authored 33 books. She died in 1976 at age 67.
- Bio by The Countryman Press

https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL685...

Reviews

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a good set of three Asey Mayo stories, though I found the last one a little weak.

"The Third Murderer" - The old Snow place is better known as the "Murder House" because it was the scene of two murders. Each time the house has been moved, a murder has been committed. Now the house is being moved a third time - and there's a third murder. Asey's cousin, Jennie Mayo, discovers the body of a young woman in a Dutch oven of the "Murder House." Asey finds a number of people would have been happy to see the last of the victim, but did any of them hate her enough to stab her to death? The puzzle is good and I didn't figure out who did it in this one. I was actually disappointed because I like the character, which shows you how good a writer Phoebe Atwood Taylor is. Jennie Mayo is amusing and surprisingly helpful (without knowing it), and her role as comedic relief is shared with Eddie "Little Arsenic" Pulster, the mischievous son of the man who is moving the "Murder House."

"Murder Rides the Gale" - A violent storm hits Cape Cod at the same time that 22 female students headed to the Merton Hall School for Girls fail to show up on time. This is during World War II and troop trains have upset the train schedule, so no one is quite sure where the girls are. Of course, Jennie Mayo is convinced her cousin Asey can find the girls without a hitch in time for the first day of classes. What Asey finds is a dead woman. Someone has killed the new teacher. Again, it turns out quite a few people would have been happy to see her dead. As usual, Jennie is both funny and helpful and the killer was someone I definitely did not suspect.

"The Stars Spell Death" - Asey Mayo is far from home now. He has been sent to deliver a message to Dr Oliver Heaslip at the Drum Observatory and try to convince the astronomer "to solve our lens problem on the experimental model the Signal Corps's howling for." This is during World War II and there is a blackout, which makes locating the observatory very difficult even for Asey. Once he finds the observatory, Asey discovers that Dr Heaslip won't be helping to solve the lens problem after all - he has been killed. This was a good mystery, but the supporting characters felt a little flat. There was a little too much posturing and hysteric going on. The strong point of the Asey Mayo stories is their down home flavor, which this one lacks.

Overall, a good trio of stories, but I recommend starting the series with one of the novels, such as The Cape Cod Mystery or The Annulet of Gilt.

[Alger Smythe-Hopkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read worse pulpy potboilers so this isn't bad for what it is, but these three novellas aren't very good either. These stories are chaotic in action and confusing in detail. Taylor really only has one trick to misdirect readers, and that is to have any potential suspect to the murder behave utterly irrationally. The situations behind these novels are obviously chosen to be flashy, and are really distracting. A house on a truck, scene of the murder in the first story, gets parked in a couple of unlikely locations for no discernible purpose aside from Taylor having nothing better to do than try to draw some humor out of the situation. An observatory with a couple of dozen doors to the outside and weirdly located near Boston, both of which seem terrible choices. This setting requires that, somehow, the telescope becomes a murder weapon.
Basically, Taylor was just just writing gimmicky one-trick stories in a formula. I was generally bored by these tales, the exposition made almost no sense, the resolutions were pulled out of thin air, and Asey has that remarkable trait of all serial detectives in that every time he goes someplace a death happens in his immediate vicinity. In a real world this would have resulted in a restraining order, or a general panic every time Asey returns to Cape Cod. This is compounded by the suspicious habit Asey has of delaying calling in the police. This combo of violent death and fending off the police makes Asey a better serial killer than a detective.

Anyway, very lightweight and silly, but also inoffensive.

[Joseph Pearce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three very intriguing short stories. Each is enjoyable in its own way. A fun read.

[Martinw · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book because I just have been on a mystery-novels-trip and remembered that - many years ago - I read a novel with this Cape Cod detective Asey Mayo. (In German then, as I am Austrian and picked up reading books in english only a few years ago). As I have only learned recently, the one I read was the very first in the series, while this collection of three stories takes place much later in Aseys life. Well, he has come a long way since then.

What I liked about the first story was - at least as far as I can remember - that he was only some local guy then, with a sound knowledge of the human nature he obtained by observing the people in his neighbourhood. In that way, he was quite like Miss Marple, only a different kind of guy of course.
In the stories at hand he is much more experienced, and he can not pretend being naive as in the first book, because in the meantime he is - as I was surprised to learn - a famous sleuth with a job at Porter Tanks who is obviously known to every child because he has been in the papers many times. This development gives the stories quite a different touch and he himself works under different conditions. Still, the stories are fun to read, though I gave up trying to figure out the murderer myself. Taylor stuffed these stories with many different person who sometimes seemed to run around like headless chickens.I will try to remember the murderers and if I reread these stories some time I will pay close attention to all the ado and try to figure out how much of it makes sense and how much is just ... well, ado. But anyway, it gives the stories a vivid feeling.

The book was a fun read, not one of the grand detective books, but the time passed quickly and Mayo still is a likeable guy. He has seen much more of the world and has laid of much of his fake naivity (which was charming), but he is still a fine chap.

[Jan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three novellas in the book. Gives a view of Cape Cod and the East Coast before WWII and during. Slower pace but has a nice rhythm.

[Cheryl Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun summer read "The Cape Cod Mystery" a delight as it was copyrighted 1931. We stayed in Chatham and this is set in Wellfleet" old fashioned murder mystery. Brings me to the "Shore".

[Denise M.]

AKA: Alice Tilton, Freeman Dana