Cry Murder!

by Norbert Davis

• Illustrated with images from the magazine publication..
Norbert Davis wrote three full length novels featuring the characters of private eye Doan and Carstairs, his Great Dane sidekick—"The Mouse in The Mountain" (also published under the titles "Rendezvous with Fear" and "Rich Dead Little Girl"), "Sally’s in the Alley," and "Oh, Murderer Mine." A novelette, "Holocaust House," is the first story to feature the two characters, but Carstairs does not play a role in its central mystery. This eBook includes "Cry Murder!," a story that appears forgotten, which was published between the first two and the last novel in "Flynn’s" magazine.

90 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 22, 2014

About the author

Norbert Davis (1909–1949) was studying law at Stanford University when he began selling stories to pulp magazines, where he found enough success that he never bothered taking the bar exam. His best-known characters are Doan and Carstairs—a private eye team made up of a man and a thoroughly clever Great Dane.

Reviews

[Roger · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://www.goodreads.com/search?q=da...#

[Moe · Rating 3 out of 5]

31/2 really, pretty good

[Emil Petersen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this because of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who wrote this in a letter to one of his former students:

"A couple of years ago I read with great pleasure a detective story called Rendezvous With Fear by a man Norbert Davis. I enjoyed it so much that I gave it not only to Smythies but also to Moore to read and both shared my high opinion of it. For, though, as you know, I’ve read hundreds of stories that amused me and that I liked reading, I think I’ve only read two perhaps that I’d call good stuff, and Davis’s is one of them. Some weeks ago I found it again by a queer coincidence in a village in Ireland, it has appeared in an edition called ‘Cherry Tree books’, something like ‘Penguin’. Now I’d like you to ask at a bookshop if Norbert Davis has written other books, and what kind. (He’s an American.) It may sound crazy, but when I recently re-read the story I liked it again so much that I thought I’d really like to write to the author and thank him. If this is nuts don’t be surprised, for so am I. I shouldn’t be surprised if he had written quite a lot and only this one story were really good."

Cry Murder! is very, very short, and yet still a lot of things happen. The mystery is not really present at all and in itself terrible. The settings however make up for a good detective story. A as probe into the works of Norbert Davis this worked fine. It was like a shorter preview of a REAL story, which this isn't. I already bought the collected stories of Doan & Carstairs, so I'll definitely give those a go.

[Whistler's Mom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most writers in the hard-boiled crime genre are surprisingly good at wry humor, but Norbert Davis was in a class by himself. I discovered his wonderful Doan and Carstairs novels last year and have been praying for more. This 90-page novella was published in a magazine and not included in the earlier ebooks, but it's just as good.

Doan is an innocuous-looking private detective who's described by his admirers as "shrewd, violent, tricky, and completely unscrupulous." Carstairs is a massive, supercilious Great Dane who disapproves of alcohol and regards WWII meat rationing as a personal insult. They've been recruited by Colonel Morris who acquired his huge farm in ways that indicate that he may be even more unscrupulous than Doan. The man who was engaged to the Colonel's daughter has just been released from prison. He was convicted of murdering a local man and other locals are gunning for him AND for the Colonel.

Doan quickly begins to suspect that there may be more to the story than the jury was told and (anyway) he's just not a fan of lynching. The bombastic colonel, his strong-minded daughter, her stoic boyfriend, and their whiskey-brewing housekeeper are all great characters. Even in a long-story/short-book format, Davis never skimps on plot OR on characters. He was one of many great "pulp" writers and the re-emergence of their work is one of the triumphs of epublishing. It may be too much to hope for that there are more undiscovered Doan and Carstairs books, but that won't stop me.

[Julie Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a big fan of the Doan and Carstairs stories by Norbert Davis. Every so often I'll read one for Forgotten Classics because, luckily for us, they're out of copyright.

Doan and Carstairs' adventures are tip top in hardboiled fiction with a comic twist and Davis was admired by the likes of Raymond Chandler. I'm greatly enjoying this one.

FINAL
A fairly slight mystery but replete with Doan and Carstairs, for which I will forgive a great many slight plots.