Thu 8 Mar 2012
Archived Review: NORBERT DAVIS – The Mouse in the Mountain.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[11] Comments
NORBERT DAVIS – The Mouse in the Mountain. William Morrow, hardcover, 1943. Handi-Books #40, paperback, 1945, as Dead Little Rich Girl. Rue Morgue Press, trade paperback, 2001.
Norbert Davis was a mystery writer who entered the scene in the early 30s with a story in Black Mask magazine entitled “Reform Racket†(June 1932). He managed to switch to the slicks such as Collier’s and The Saturday Evening Post, had a couple of detective novels published in hardcover, then one in paperback, and suddenly the bottom seemed to have fell out of the market for him. He committed suicide in 1949 when he was only 40 years old.
This is the first of the three novels, all featuring the detective “team” of Doan and Carstairs. Doan is a little mild fat man who is also a private eye. According to his description on page 3: “He looked like a very nice, pleasant sort of person, and on rare occasions he was.” Carstairs, his friend and constant companion, is an enormous Great Dane.
Doan and Carstairs are in Mexico in this one, on a mission consisting (according to common knowledge) of finding and convincing a fugitive from the United States to stay in Mexico and not come home to bother a certain group of politicians who would rather certain activities remain unknown.
“Common knowledge” may or may not be correct, as I’m sure you realize, and therein likes the story. What is most remarkable about Norbert Davis and his style of writing is how funny the story is, and how quickly the comedy can change into sudden violence.
To reach the village of Los Altos, for example, Doan must take a sightseeing bus loaded with other typical American tourists, including the rich heiress to a flypaper company and a family with one of the brattiest kids this side of the comic strips. The laughter stops, however, at least momentarily, when they arrive and within minutes Doan must shoot an escaped fugitive in the mouth. Within days many more funny incidents have occurred, and so have several more deaths (not including the earthquake).
It’s a top notch job of writing. Even though the plot itself is a little thin, it’s hard to complain about that. Davis makes writing seem so easy that anyone could do it, but if that were so, why can’t everybody write a novel that goes down as smoothly as this?
The Doan & Carstairs series —
The Mouse in the Mountain. Morrow, hc, 1943.
Sally’s in the Alley. Morrow, hc, 1943.
Oh, Murderer Mine. Handi-Books, pb, 1946.
A long article about Norbert Davis and one of his enthusiastic readers, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, appears here on the main Mystery*File website. Following the article are several home photos of Davis and a complete bibliography, including his short fiction.
March 8th, 2012 at 7:32 pm
Thanks for the review. I have been interested in this series but I have not read any of the stories. I was able to download all of the stories to my Kindle for a total of only $.99.
March 8th, 2012 at 8:05 pm
You don’t even have to pay 99 cents. munseys.com has them all for free. Davis is one of those writers who is a pure joy to read. Doan and Carstairs are a unique and memorable team. Both of them are very bad natured, and they really don’t get along that well. Davis’s description of their relationship and the way Carstairs tries to stop Doan from having any fun is priceless.
March 8th, 2012 at 10:05 pm
I thoroughly enjoyed MOUSE IN THE MOUNTAIN. I have yet to read the other two books in the series, but have them all thanks to Rue Morgue Press. OH MURDERER MINE was the most difficult one to find until they came around and resurrected Doan and Carstairs.
March 9th, 2012 at 12:19 am
One of my favorite pulp writers because of his two great series in DIME DETECTIVE: Max Latin and Bail Bond Dodd. Come to think of it the Bail Bond Dodd stories have not been reprinted. Maybe this is something Altus Press or Black Dog Books can look into.
Speaking of Black Dog Books, they recently published a collection of Norbert Davis’ westerns, mainly from STAR WESTERN and DIME WESTERN, the two best western titles that Popular Publications published for many years. The title is DEAD MAN’S BRAND and I rave about it in a short review on amazon.com.
The Golden Age of Pulp Reprints indeed!
March 9th, 2012 at 5:49 am
Through blogs like this one, more and more people get info about the pulps, and realize what a cultural value, as a mirror of their time, but also of man as such, they are.
Fast and terse is not just cheap- it can mean literature, like in ‘Hemingway’.
It can mean- telling a story in a real, un-artificial, believable, way.
The Doc
March 9th, 2012 at 7:37 am
Doc, you are right about the possibility of pulp fiction being literature. Arthur Sullivant Hoffman, the editor of ADVENTURE, firmly believed that there was no reason that well written action and adventure fiction could not qualify and compare favorably to other forms of literature.
In fact, during the 1920’s he made ADVENTURE into one of the very best fiction magazines ever published. I’ve come to this conclusion after 55 years of collecting and reading scores of different fiction magazines, from pulps and digest to literary quarterlies and slicks.
March 9th, 2012 at 12:20 pm
#5. Doc, if only we could have convinced some of the pulp writers. Paul Ernst refused to talk about his pulp days. Norbert Davis’s suicide was due to more than one factor, but one was he couldn’t succeed in the literary fiction/slicks market and he did not want to go back “down” to pulps.
Norbert Davis is among the few writers of whom I could read his grocery list and be entertained.
The editor of BLACK MASK reportedly did not like his humorous take on crime and murder. But Davis, as others such as Elmore Leonard, Donald Westlake and Gregory Mcdonald, understood the key to humor in crime fiction is to make the characters’ world real but not reality. Every character and situation is real and identifiable but slightly exaggerated.
We accept Doan’s reactions and narrations of his world much as we accept the realities of noir, men’s adventure, romance, and pulp stories.
Norbert Davis was one of the best.
March 9th, 2012 at 2:33 pm
I enjoyed this one very much, and will be reading the next two soon. By the way, they are IN PRINT for those who prefer their books in ink-on paper.
March 9th, 2012 at 7:55 pm
I’m going to look Davis up. Another thing learned, good books found.
The Doc
March 11th, 2012 at 8:52 pm
I just finished reading Mouse in the Mountain. I enjoyed the characters very much but as the reviewer said the plot is a little thin. I am looking forward to reading the other stories.
April 23rd, 2021 at 4:33 pm
[…] See also: Mystery*File has also reviewed this title here. […]