Out of Order

Rating:
Summary: A Plateful of Red Herrings
Review: First published in 1936, Asey Mayo-- the Codfish Sherlock as the author refers to him in other books in the series-- has dropped quite a bit of his Cape Cod dialect and is wintering in Jamaica-- bless his little pea pickin' heart. However, he is called back to New England in the middle of a February blizzard when he receives a long, incomprehensible cable from Bill Porter, scion of the Porter Motor Company Porters-- those who have met Asey before may remember that Asey drives a 16 value Porter roadster in some of the other books.

Bill, you see, has an old college enemy-- a hard drinking, hard smoking, villainous looking fellow named Harper who lost the Big Game for them in college by running the wrong way with the ball into the other team's end zone. On the anniversary of that date Harper and Bill always get in a fight. But this year Bill is determined to end the tradition-- that is until Harper insults Asey's detecting ability-- Bill ends up involved with a bet of $50,000 that Asey can solve the mystery of a grocery list made out a year before by Harper's deceased aunt.

However, the mystery that absorbs Asey is the murder of Harper's other aunt under very unusual circumstances. Once again character development and plot lose out to the biggest mess of red herrings that this reader has ever encountered. Figuring out who did it wasn't that hard having read a few other books by the author, but how it was done gives the deducting part of the brain a bit of workout.

Again if you like puzzle mysteries--