Punch with Care

Punch with Care, an Asey Mayo mystery


Corpses are here, and Mayo’s got ’em.

Asey Mayo, Cape Cod’s gift to the amateur detective world, tackles another baffling mystery, which creeps up on him before he knows it, smack between the one o’clock Bull Moose siren and the one o’clock Quick Quiz Question on WBBB.

While murder is no novelty to Mayo, this case involves him with such bizarre items as the Pochet and Back Shore Railroad, a private narrow-gauge line in Mrs. Douglass’s back yard; Lulu Belle, its antique Pullman with the silver-plated spittoons; Carolyn Barton Boone and her Larrabee College Project on Town Government; and a few bewildered adolescents who had always intended to go to college anyway.

As might be expected, Cousin Jennie aids and abets the case between batches of sugar gingerbread, and old Doc Cummings gleans further material for his projected memoirs From Mustard Plaster to Penicillin. There are the clam diggers too, and the Summer Folks, and, of course, the Tourist Trade.

Just who the corpse is, and where Asey got it—well, these questions along with dozens of other strange and intriguing happenings are handled shrewdly and expertly in the murder-cum-humor mystery that continues to delight Phoebe Atwood Taylor fans. The Philadelphia Inquirer says, “Another Asey Mayo story is always welcome with its sure-fire combination of Cape Cod atmosphere, well-knit plot, excitement and comedy.”