From the massive archive….
In the course of
an arduous trek through a sluggish mystery novel, I took a break and tore
through this little gem, the third and—alas!—final novel about the unlikely
team of Doan and Carstairs (the other two are The Mouse in the Mountain and Sally's in the Alley). Doan is a chubby,
pleasant-faced private detective; Carstairs is the regal, haughty Great Dane he
won in a crap game and who disapproves of him.
Doan is hired by
54-year-old cosmetics magnate Heloise of Hollywood to bodyguard her husband,
26-year-old meteorologist Eric Trent—a.k.a. "Handsome Lover Boy" in
Heloise's magazine ads. Heloise, though still quite attractive herself, is
afraid younger women will hit on Eric and wants Doan to supply the necessary
discouragement.
Things get going
when Melissa Gregory, an anthropology instructor at Breckenbridge University,
is incensed by Trent's usurpation of her office, as sanctioned by T. Ballard
Bestwyck, the university president. She confronts Trent about it, but her
impetrations have no effect. Trent is arrogant and stubborn. Melissa learns he
might even be taking over the apartment she maintains on campus.
That night,
Melissa returns home after a date with assistant English professor Frank Ames
to find an intruder in her apartment. The intruder knocks her out and flees,
but not before Melissa has had time to scream. Hearing her, Doan and Carstairs
investigate, and in the course of their pursuit, Doan is shot at and barely
missed by the assailant. He subsequently discovers Frank Ames's body in a trash
can. Ames's throat has been sliced open.
It's only the
beginning. More bodies remain to be discovered before Doan wraps things up. I
won't go on—the book is only 128 pages long—except to say that the chapter in
which Carstairs runs amuck in Heloise's salon is worth the price of the book. I
recommend this one and its predecessors, along with the out-of-print The
Adventures of Max Latin from The Mysterious Press (five novelettes
originally published in Dime Detective), as wonderful examples of the
screwball comedy school of mystery a la Jonathan Latimer and Craig Rice. Forget
about realism, thematic explorations, or character depth—although some of
Davis's characters are memorably wacky. This is storytelling as pure
entertainment. Davis could and did write stories as hardboiled as those of
Dashiell Hammett, Frederick Nebel, and Raymond Chandler, but his best work
features an off-the-wall comic perspective on the tough detective story.
For more on
Norbert Davis, see http://www.blackmaskmagazine.com/norbertdavis.html
Barry Ergang
©2011, 2017, 2023
Derringer Award winner
Barry Ergang’s own fiction can be found at Amazon and Smashwords.
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