TAYLOR, Phoebe Atwood

Born 18 May 1909, Boston, Massachusetts; died 8 January 1976, Boston, Massachusetts

Also wrote under: Alice Tilton

Daughter of John D. and Josephine Atwood Taylor; married Grantley W. Taylor

Phoebe Atwood Taylor's parents were both natives of Cape Cod; her father was a physician. Taylor graduated from Barnard College in 1930, published her first detective novel in 1931 and published up to three detective novels a year, every year afterwards for almost 20 years. She wrote between midnight and 3:00 a.m., "after housekeeping all day," usually "beginning three weeks before the deadline for the novel to be delivered to her New York publishers." (Her Leonidas Witherall novels include heart-felt depictions of the harried popular author, besieged by telegrams from his publisher, struggling to meet his deadlines.) Taylor married a prominent Boston surgeon of the same surname and lived in Newton Highlands and then in Weston, suburbs of Boston, always keeping a summer home at Wellfleet on Cape Cod. She died of a heart attack.

Taylor's first book, The Cape Cod Mystery (1931), features her most famous detective, Asa Alden (Asey) Mayo. A "man of all work" to the wealthy Porter family, he is a "fine and bleak" Cape Cod native who chews tobacco and must be sixty but could be anything from thirty-five to seventy. Using what he calls "common sense," he extricates a Porter scion suspected by incompetent local officials of murdering a popular novelist and identifies the actual killer—the 300-lb. widow of a Boston minister who bashed the writer with an advance copy of his latest book, a sensational account of her husband's life.

By the last of the Cape Cod mysteries, Diplomatic Corpse (1951), the hero's character has evolved and, like many of his fellow series detectives, he has become a superman. "Tall, lean, salty Asey Mayo" has changed from chewing tobacco, as in the first two books, to smoking a pipe, and from being the Porters' handyman to being Chairman of the Board of Porter Motors. In intervening novels he has been revealed as a more and more expert marksman, knife-thrower, hand-to-hand fighter, driver, sailor, and cook.

The charm of the Cape Cod novels lies not only in Asey's role as the wryly humorous Yankee, but also in their settings. Taylor's eye for detail and lively sense of place combine with many glimpses of the daily life of the times, and now increase the historical interest and fun of her novels.

Leonidas Xenophon Witherall, hero of the mysteries Taylor wrote under the pen name of Alice Tilton, solves crimes taking place in a recognizable prewar and wartime Boston and its suburbs. He is a master, then headmaster and owner of Meredith's Academy, a private boys' school. His escapades are even crazier and more convoluted, if possible, than Asey Mayo's. The Hollow Chest (1941) concerns a samurai sword as murder weapon, an antique horse car, a Lady Baltimore cake, a papier-maché lion's head, and the manuscript of a treatise on the "11th-century vowel shift," and requires a massive suspension of disbelief.

Many of Taylor's works are notable for their brisk, even breathless, pace. Both detectives encounter problems and solve them within a day or two, and their chases—by car, on foot, by plane, by motorboat, or via antique horsecar—often make their adventures tests of physical stamina and agility as well as mental ability. This pace and Taylor's zany plots rife with eccentric characters and odd props often make her mysteries seem the literary equivalents of the classic screwball film comedies of the 1930s.

Taylor's mystery comedies also incorporate many elements of the classic detective story. Asey has a trio of Dr. Watsons and a Lestrade. Taylor includes one case of young love per story: the ingénue is never guilty, nor is the young man who falls in love with her. Like many British detective stories of the same era, Taylor's works are touched with xenophobia, racism, and anti-Semitism. Some of this narrowness is of the "Napoleon was a great man and a great general, but he was an off-Islander" variety and goes with Taylor's regional-comedy territory.

Taylor's mystery-farces will never appeal to those who want realism in their criminal fiction, but they have withstood the passage of time at least as well as those of her Golden Age sisters, Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh. Taylor's characters, settings, and historical interest still provide excellent entertainment, and explain why the novels have been reissued in the 1960s, in the 1980s, and again in the 1990s.

Other Works:

Death Lights a Candle (1932). The Mystery of the Cape Cod Players (1933). The Mystery of the Cape Cod Tavern (1934). Sandbar Sinister (1934). Deathblow Hill (1935). The Tinkling Symbol (1935). The Crimson Patch (1936). Out of Order (1936). Beginning with a Bash (1937, reprinted 1972). Figure Away (1937). Octagon House (1937). The Annulet of Gilt (1938). Banbury Bog (1938). The Cut Direct (1938). Cold Steal (1939). Spring Harrowing (1939). The Criminal C.O.D. (1940). The Deadly Sunshade (1940). The Left Leg (1940). The Perennial Boarder (1941). The Six Iron Spiders (1942). Three Plots for Asey Mayo (1942). File for Record (1943). Going, Going, Gone (1943). Dead Ernest (1944). Proof of the Pudding (1945). The Asey Mayo Trio (1946). Punch with Care (1946). The Iron Clew (1947, in Britain as The Iron Hand).

Phoebe Atwood Taylor's manuscripts are collected in the Mugar Memorial Library of Boston University.

Bibliography:

Haycraft, H., Murder for Pleasure (1941). Klein, K. G., ed., Great Women Mystery Writers: Classic to Contemporary (1994). Waugh, C. R., ed., Murder and Mystery in Boston (1987).

Reference works:

A Catalogue of Crime (1971). Detecting Women (1994). Encyclopedia Mysteriosa (1994). Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection (1976). St. James Guide to Crime & Mystery Writers (1996). TCA, TCAS. Twentieth-Century Crime and Mystery Writers (1980).

Other references:

Barnard Alumnae Monthly (Oct. 1932, March 1936). NYT (12 Jan. 1976). WP (17 Jan. 1976).

—SUSAN SUTTON SMITH