Review: Recommended as Intro to the Series - Wonderful Character Sketches
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 4, 2010
This is a short story first published in 1940 as a two part serial in the pulp fiction magazine Argosy. The author later decided to develop the characters in three novellas which have also been adapted to the Kindle. This is a very quick read, and thus since it is so inexpensive I recommend that anyone who is interested in the genre and plans to read the subsequently published books( which I rate highly) should read it first.The main character in this book is the detective Doan, and unfortunately his huge Great Dane Carstairs makes only a cameo introductory appearance.  Fortunately, in the subsequent stories Carstairs plays an integral role and adds immeasurably to the reader's enjoyment. Doan's unimpressive appearance leads his adversaries to underestimate his (and Carstairs') skill and intelligence, and in this introduction to his character the author has not yet fully developed Doan's skills. However, it is still a typical pulp fiction story concerning a hard boiled detective except for the fact that as the author developed the characters over the series he injected much more humor than was usual for that era.After an interesting introduction to the series' characters in the first few chapters, Doan is tasked to protect a young heiress about to receive her inheritance. He travels to a wilderness resort cabin, and becomes isolated there with a strange cast of characters while a blizzard rages outside. However,  murders occur, misdirection abounds, and of course he eventually untangles the web of deceit, earning his keep and rescuing a damsel in distress.. As in all short stories of this type, the prose is spare and the character development minimal. But a fast pace keeps the reader's interest.Unfortunately,  the author Norbert Davis is not as well known as other pulp fiction writers of the period for three reasons. First, his stories encompassed a wide array of genres, so he never built a reputation as a practitioner  of specific type (e.g. detective, SF, etc.) . Second, his detective stories included a strain of humor which was highly unusual for the period, a hard boiled detective story was not supposed to be funny. Third, he committed suicide at age 40, supposedly after he had been diagnosed with cancer. Thus, his potential literary legacy was truncated. However, among his peers he was regarded as in a class with the best writers of the era, including Hammett and McDonald. He graduated from Stanford with a law degree, but never took the bar exam - choosing instead to pursue a career which he had already established by being published while still in college, usually being paid at the going rate of a penny a word. Hopefully, the advent of ebooks and specialized small presses will allow many more potential fans to enjoy his works and be delighted by Carstairs' collaborations with Doan.Also, after reading this short story you can decide if you agree with me that the author's choice of title was very clever due to the multiple images invoked.Tucker Andersen 6/4/2010