Spring Harrowing

Asey Mayo Cape Cod Mystery #14

by Phoebe Atwood Taylor

Chapter Pets and Curiosii. Brass Buttonsiii. The Wagh Nakhiv. Siren in the Windv. A Dragging Soundvi. In a Knotted Handkerchiefvii. What is a Hoople?viii. The Odometerix. Sigismund the Fourthx. The Unpredictable Noelxi. Crystal Clearxii. End of HarrowingBack cover shows Dell Mapback of "Bart Paget's house, scene of a murder".

Genres: Mystery, Cozy

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1939

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

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

Middling Mayo—Asey’s always fun, the doctor is a welcome companion, and this one is less frantic than some of the later ones. But I wish Taylor had exploited her skill at chills rather than trying always to get a laugh. I do love Arthur and Hoople, though.

[Katherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not one of Asey's best. It seemed to lack the coherence to make the ending make sense, which is saying a good deal for books with as many characters and subplots as Taylor's.

[Michael Reilly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been enjoying working my way through this series. Taylor's first Asey Mayo book was published in 1931. This is the thirteenth. It was first published in 1939.

Asey Mayo is an old Cape Codder. He was a sailor, an engineer and has become the man to call when a murder happens on the Cape. The newspapers call him the "Codfish Sherlock".

This is one of the better books in a very good series. Bart Paget is a wealthy bridge engineer. His large cape home is crammed full of all kinds of things he collects, stamps, vases, pictures, knives, mirrors, carvings, on and on.

Paget is found dead in the house with claw marks all over him. A neighbor is feuding with her neighbors because she is keeping wild cats at her house. She reports that the wildcats have escaped. She is the first suspect.

Asey gets involved and the whole thing gets much more complicated. There are secret marriages, peculiar wills, a one-armed golf fiend, an attractive young widow and Madame Lucy, a medium. Mayo is helped by his old friend Doctor Cummings and hindered by his old nemesis, State Trooper Hanson.

This is a fun well-constructed classic mystery story with a good helping of Cape Cod local color and eccentrics.

I read it in a Dell Mystery Crime Map edition. They were small (4 1/4" x 6 3/4") paperbacks with full color maps on the back cover showing the location of the action in the book. This one has a map of Bart Paget's property, with a cutaway drawing of the house showing each of the rooms. Dell published an amazing 577 of them from 1943 to 1952.

The book starts with a page of "Persons This Mystery Is About" followed by a page of "Things This Mystery is About". The book and the packaging are great fun. It reflects a time when mystery writers were not as concerned with wrestling with big social issues or exploring deep emotions and where more interested in telling a clever mystery story.

(I was going to mention how cheap these paperbacks were, but I could not find a price on the book. I spent some time online. It looks like none of the Dell Mystery books had a price listed on the cover and I couldn't find one anywhere online. My guess is that they cost 25 cents.)

[Kate · Rating 1 out of 5]

"On peaceful Cape Cod, the eccentric collector lies dead on his study floor, his body ripped by a deadly claw. Outside a wealthy young widow scours the dark countryside for her missing wild cats, and down the road the neighbors play a strange game, a game they can't easily explain to the police.

"Where was everyone around nine that night? Which of them knew the ancient scandal in Bart Paget's life? Which of them hated the beautiful Susan Remington? And which of Bart Paget's sprawling collections wail enough to unerringly lay hands on the wagh nakh -- the murderous claw using by leopard men?

"The most bizarre case in the career of that wily, ornery, homespun ex-sailor and handyman Asey Mayo '... a dete4ctive who may soon enter that gallery of eccentric originals .. Dr. Fell, Poirot, Peter Wimsey, Fther Brown, and the great Sherlock himself.' "
~~back cover

This one left me absolutely cold. Large cast of characters, all of whom seem to be doing something different and nefarious, all at the same time. And how does one thing link up with something else? It all gets sewn together in the end, of course, but the plot was so convoluted nothing made sense until the final pages when the wily, homespun ex-sailor pulled it all together. Meh.

[Phillip Sawyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my least favorite of Taylor's novels. Many of the characters seem to lack the charm of previous efforts. Asey is his same old self. He deftly solves the murder of a collector. To me it felt a little too deftly, a little too convenient in many of the plot points.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very nice convoluted mystery as I continue my reread of the Asey Mayo series.

[Joseph Pearce · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good mystery.

[Denise M.]

AKA: Alice Tilton, Freeman Dana