Murder at the New York World's Fair FREEMAN, Dana [Phoebe Atwood Taylor] Crime, Mystery and Spy Fiction,Dust Jackets, Notable

8vo. Pp. [vi], 265, [1, blank] Bound in publisher's blue and orange cloth, front board and spine stamped in dark blue. A touch of age-toning to endpapers; small stain the size of a chickpea on the fore-edge. In the three-color dust jacket illustrated with the Trylon and Perisphere. Jacket is lightly toned, with slight edgewear and creasing. Old tape reinforcements to verso. Price of $2.00 intact on front flap. First printing. "Freeman Dana" was the pen name chosen by established mystery writer Phoebe Atwood Taylor for this one-off; Taylor was picked by Random House honcho Bennett Cerf, who thought to exploit the hullabaloo surrounding the fair with a little marketing of his own.Taylor's fictional detective, Asey Mayo, the Cape Cod Sherlock, who appeared in 24 of her novels, is not featured in the mystery at-hand. Instead, we have Mrs. Daisy Tower, wife of the former New York governor, who discovers a murder victim in the private train car of Conrad Cassell, a well-heeled art collector who's traveling to the World's Fair.The dust jacket features a biplane swooping down from the "R" of "Fair," heading past the Perisphere to the base of the Trylon. Although the illustrator is uncredited, that they pulled off an exploitative "MURDER" on the spine in block letters was a real coup. An uncommon book, especially with the dust jacket. Auction results record three copies sold in the past 22 years: two in 2019, one in 2002. This title is listed in HUBIN, p. 585, but the author is not identified as the pseudonym of Phoebe Taylor. MAGILL, in Critical Survey of Mystery and Detective Fiction (Vol. IV), devotes several pages to Phoebe Atwood Taylor. Dust jacket is now preserved in a removable, clear archival sleeve.