Phoebe Atwood Taylor: Six Iron Spiders (2007)

From the Publisher:
"Another Asey Mayo story is always welcome with its sure-fire combination of Cape Cod atmosphere, well-knit plot, excitement and comedy." -- Philadelphia Inquirer

"What a treat to have the humor of Asey Mayo available again in the delicious detective fiction of Phoebe Atwood Taylor." -- Otto Penzler, owner, The Mysterious Bookshop, New York

The spirit of Asey Mayo's homecoming was quickly dampened by the discovery of the body in the buttery. One fact was simple: someone had murdered Philemon Mundy with a blunt instrument. But the sudden disappearance of the corpse was only the first of many baffling developments. And there was no guarantee that the killer couldn't strike again.

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 (1918-39). 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.

Phoebe Atwood Taylor: Six Iron Spiders. An Asey Mayo Cape Cod Mystery. Countryman Press / Foul Play Press, ISBN: 0881502308 (March, 2007), 290 p., $10.95.