Serving generous portions of history and mystery
from our monthly menu
Volume 1, Issue 2, February 2003
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Le Cafe Singe Bleu Serving generous portions of history and mystery from our monthly menu Volume 1, Issue 2, February 2003
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Death Lights A Candle Phoebe Atwood Taylor Time: 1932 (Contemporary) Detective: Asey Mayo Location:Cape Cod, Massachusetts Should you read this book? Oui |
 This book is out of print but may be purchased through www.abe.com.
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Our Hostess Miss �Prudence �Snoodles� Whitsby - the narrator
The Victim
The Sleuth
The Suspects
Interested parties Miss Prudence Whitsby, who sixth months ago saw her niece Betsy married off to Bill Porter (wealthy second son of the automobile Porters), wants nothing more than to enjoy life in Boston, and get to the store for a spool of orange thread. Her friend, eccentric sculptor Rowena Fible, has other ideas. She persuades Prudence to come with her to the Cape for the rest of the winter. Miss Prue does so, but she regrets it. ''I had no intention of ending up, as I eventually did, at Cape Cod on a house-party during the course of which two people lost their lives and I myself was very nearly killed.'' Once at the Cape, Rowena discovers that a house, nay, a mansion, has been built next to hers, and that it is occupied by an old enemy, Adelbert Stires. She had been a suffragette - he had owned a factory which fired its women workers when they became suffragettes. Nevertheless when John Kent calls and requests that the two women come and act as chaperones to Stires newly-arrived ward for a couple of weeks, Rowena accepts. Once at the mansion, things begin going wrong at once. Adlbert Stires is late to his own houseparty, thanks to a blinding snowstorm, and when he is found dead during the night, there's no getting out. Fortunately Asey Mayo was already on hand (Prudence Whitsby and he were old acquaintances, having become good friends during The Cape Cod Mystery). Asey sets out immediately to solve the crime, but the appearance of arsenic in the possession of not one, not, two, but all of the trapped suspects makes things difficult.
This second entry in the Asey Mayo series is a slight disappointment. The murder method is ingenious, (and more importantly, perfectly possible. See the external website History Magazine and its article on arsenic (AFTER you've finished reading the book). Prudence Whitsby once again narrates Asey's detective endeavours, but she's less likeable in this outing - she keeps harping on the servants! (''Are you sure they couldn't have done it?'') Also, although she was the daughter of a lawyer in the first book, in this one she comments that she's 'never been able to understand a legal document,' as well as others which are uncharacteristic of the independent heroine, based on her first outing. There is a bit too much padding in the book, as well. The 'denouement', the thing in the mystery, comes after ten pages of extra material tacked on presumably to fill a required page count. (Asey goes away to do some 'sleuthing,' Miss Whitsby and Dr. Walker rehash everything over several pages, Asey returns, having merely confirmed what he already knew.) This is Miss Prudence's last appearance as narrator in a Mayo mystery. Subsequently, Taylor will always employ an omnipresent narrator, and Mayo will be helped and hampered in his detective efforts by his cousin Jenny and her husband Syl, who will supply a lot of the humor that Taylor is noted for. Not a 'must' read, but a 'good' read.
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Thank you so much |