Fri 8 Jul 2022
A 1001 Midnights PI Mystery Review: NORBERT DAVIS – The Mouse in the Mountain.
Posted by Steve under 1001 Midnights , Reviews[3] Comments
by Bill Pronzini
NORBERT DAVIS – The Mouse in the Mountain. Doan and Carstairs #1. Morrow, hardcover, 1943. Grosset & Dunlap, hardcover reprint, 1944.Handi-Books #40, paperback, 1945, as Dead Little Rich Girl. Rue Morgue Press, trade paperback, 2001.
Norbert Davis was among the most talented of all the writers who specialized in pulp fiction in the Thirties and early Forties. Although he was primarily a magazine writer (he graduated from the pulps to such slicks as The Saturday Evening Post in 1943, he published three mystery novels featuring the detective “team” of Doan and Carstairs. Each of these is fast-paced, occasionally lyrical in a hard-edged way, and often quite funny. Davis, in fact, was one of the few writers to successfully blend the so-called hard-boiled story with farcical humor.
The Mouse in the Mountain is the first of the adventures through which Doan and Carstairs prowl and howl. Doan is a private eye who looks fat but isn’t, and who, despite a great fondness for booze, has never suffered a hangover; Carstairs is an aloof, fawn-colored Great Dane whom Doan won in a crap game and who considers Doan a low, uncouth person, not at all the Sort’ he would have chosen for a master.
The scene is Mexico, where Doan has come to persuade a fugitive crook not to return to the United States and give himself up, At least, that is what he tells the heroine of the piece, Janet Martin, a shy (at least in the beginning) schoolteacher in the Wisteria Young Ladies:Seminary; Doan, like Sam Spade, isn’t really as corrupt as he sometimes pretends.
Things begin to happen at a fast and furious pace even before Doan and Carstairs arrive in the picturesque little village of Los Altos: A famous Mexican bandit named Garcia is on the loose and causing a great deal of consternation among the local authorities. But what happens later causes considerably more consternation: the town; s first earthquake in 150 years, which results in widespread destruction and chaos, and precipitates three cold-blooded murders.
Doan solves the murders, of course, and restores peace and harmony to Los Altos-with not a little help from Carstairs and Janet Martin (who has also been kept busy falling in and out of love with a handsome but exasperating Mexican Army officer, Captain Emile Perona). Great fun from first page to last.
The other two Doan and Ca (1946), which has a college setting and a scene in which Carstairs wreaks havoc in Heloise of Hollywood’s beauty salon that will have you laughing out loud.
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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007. Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.
July 8th, 2022 at 10:07 pm
I fell in love with Doan and Carstairs with SALLY IN THE ALLEY, and never looked back. I can’t pretend to be the least unprejudiced about these, they are beautifully written, well plotted, move at a pace, have uniformly interesting settings, and are often rib achingly funny.
Doan’s interpretation of Carstairs disdain for him is something any dog owner who has ever owned a show animal can empathize with.
If you find a pulp with a Davis story read it, and these books are fairly easy to find thankfully at least in ebook form, and there is no format you will not enjoy them in.
Unlike some writers in the screwball hardboiled school Davis never went over the top or lost control. His books are always a perfect balance of the elements of toughness, mystery, and screwball humor.
July 9th, 2022 at 3:54 am
A most enjoyable book. Love it. It is tragic that the author wasn’t appreciated in his lifetime and finally committed suicide.
July 9th, 2022 at 1:24 pm
Always wanted to love Norbert Davis more than I did. Especially given his famously highbrow fandom: https://mysteryfile.com/NDavis/Wit.html
But for me, Carstairs was the only character I thoroughly enjoyed (though I’ve yet to try bail bond Dodd). And he has a non-speaking role. Doan strikes me as a bit of a smug jerk—a characterization I’m sure he’d gladly admit.