The Six Iron Spiders

by Phoebe Atwood Taylor

Book Overview

While on leave from the Porter factory, Asey Mayo discovers a murder in the buttery of his Cape Cod home. Mayo's investigation amid the deprivations of the war years--rationing, suspicion, preparedness--is an entertaining encounter with history.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0881502308
• ISBN13: 9780881502305
• Release Date: June 2007
• Publisher: Countryman Press
• Length: 290 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 4.3" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

A mystery of the WWII years

Asey Mayo is working full bore, full time at the Porter Factory making tanks. He gets a two day vacation and comes home to Cape Cod and a mulititude of changes. There's a mob in his house having First Aid lessons, the women are all wearing slacks including his cousin Jenny who doesn't have the figure for them. Once they all depart and he gets inside, he finds a body in his buttery. The victim, a man who is not in the military because of a heart condition, has been bashed with an iron frypan, the spider of the title. All of the suspects have bought one of these spiders as a birthday gift for the victim. As with all of Atwood Taylor's mysteries, it's a good story with clues and complications but because she is using life as it was at the time as part of her plot, the story is more frantic, faster-paced and the characters don't have the depth of those in the earlier works. My parents mentioned food & gas rationing and shortages of that period, but they never participated in all the war related activities of this book, the practicing for disasters, bandage making, Red Cross work or spotting. It was never clear to me if it was ships or planes that they were trying to spot. So possibly that was exaggerated for the story, or maybe it really was like that on Cape Cod. In any event, it made for lots of complications for Asey's detecting and a lively read for me sixty years later.