Sandbar Sinister

When a box of bootleg liquor washes up on the shores of Cape Cod, it brings a whole lot of trouble along with it in this classic case for Asey Mayo, the Cape’s answer to Sherlock Holmes.

The picturesque Cape Cod village of East Pochet is not its usual self when Elizabeth Colton arrives. The previous evening, a bootlegger dumped two hundred cases of liquor offshore, and the whole town endeavored to drink it before the hooch could be impounded. When the fog of revelry lifted, however, a bearded mystery writer was found dead in the boat house at the Sandbar estate, and another body was discovered on the nearby beach.

As every uncovered clue reveals a new question, Asey Mayo, the Cape’s answer to Sherlock Holmes, finds himself investigating one of the trickiest cases of his career. Luckily, though, he’s got enough Cape Cod know-how and common sense to cut through the red herrings and discover whodunit.

A charming beachside cozy with an unpredictable plot, memorable characters, and loads of 1930s Cape Cod atmosphere, Sandbar Sinister offers hours of vintage reading pleasure, placing it among the greatest mysteries of celebrated author Phoebe Atwood Taylor.

As baffling as it is amusing . . . Class A.”
—New York Times

Phoebe Atwood Taylor (1909-1976) was one of the most beloved and most successful mystery authors of the 1930s and 1940s, writing under her own name and two pseudonyms, Freeman Dana and Alice Tilton. The Asey Mayo character, first introduced in The Cape Cod Mystery, went on to star in 24 novels in a series informed by the author’s generations-long family history in Cape Cod.