Murder at the New York World's Fair

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Phoebe Atwood Taylor (1909-1976) is best known for writing two mystery series. One features Cape Cod amateur sleuth Asey Mayo. Leonidas Witherall is the main character of the second, which Taylor wrote under the pen-name of Alice Tilton. This book was released under another sobriquet, one solely attached to this one: Freeman Dana. And it belongs to neither series run. Instead, it was commissioned by Random House publisher Bennett Cerf with the intent of coinciding with the opening of the New York World's Fair in 1939. Ms. Taylor's task was to write a novel that would place a murder mystery in the middle of an event that had not yet happened, at a location that had yet to be built: a fiction based on a future reality. Just for accomplishing that goal, she should get five stars.

In the 1987 reprint of this book, the introduction by Dilys Winn and the afterword by Ellen Nehr both help to put the creation of Ms. Taylor's work into perspective. The author was provided...Read more