Murder at the New York World's Fair

Mrs. Daisy Tower is 67, the widow of a former governor, and for the last year has undergone the untender attentions of her nephew Egleston and his overbearing wife Elfrida during her convalescence from pneumonia and a broken hip.

That might explain why she stows away in a laundry truck headed for Boston, but it doesn't really explain how she finds herself confronting a dead body aboard the private train of art collector Conrad Cassell, en route to the New York World's Fair.

She and her fellow passengers find themselves in a screwball comedy fix, set against the pageantry of the World's Fair opening day under the shadow of the Fair's spectacular trylon. Daisy must not only identify the corpse and the murderer, but save the Fair from destruction by a maniac-and find a way to get Egleston and Elfrida out of her hair.

Phoebe Atwood Taylor (1909-1976) was an American writer of mystery novels, who was born and died in Boston. Phoebe Atwood Taylor wrote mystery novels under her own name, and as Freeman Dana and Alice Tilton. Her first novel, The Cape Cod Mystery, introduced the "Codfish Sherlock", Asey Mayo, who became a series character appearing in 24 novels. Taylor's work was light in tone, a bit more serious than screwball comedy, but fun and easy to read. According to critic Dilys Winn, "Mrs. Taylor is the mystery equivalent to Buster Keaton."She borrowed heavily on her own background (being born in Boston, and very familiar with Cape Cod) to produce books full of local color. "As a whole the Asey Mayo books are a treasure trove of humor and local culture of the Cape in the 1930s and '40s."Taylor adopted the pseudonyms of Freeman Dana and Alice Tilton for her other books because her publisher did not want her known as a writer of potboilers.

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