The Blackmask site, which mixed pulp fiction with public domain works and others, is dead. The good news is that a replacement site exists, called Munseys–with its own share of freebies.
What’s more, a different site named Manybooks.net is sporting a growing pulp section and is even experimenting with Kindle format.
Manybooks has been featuring more pulp titles on the homepage, where I ran across The Mouse in the Mountain and was introduced to Doan and Carstairs. At Rue Morgue Press, I found an introduction to the works of Norbert Davis which puts his life and pulp of his era in context (warning: sad ending!). It’s too bad he wasn’t born fifty years later, because hard-boiled humor is in these days.
Pony-sized dog
Doan is an affable, fairly laid-back PI, and his partner, Carstairs, is a judgmental, irascible, pony-sized dog. Carstairs is right up there with the best animal companions in fiction, and his scenes are amusing. The memorable bits in this first installment involve Doan playing director to Carstairs to help a father control his unruly son.
The plot, such as it is, involves a bus trip in Mexico that ends in murder. There are some fairly stereotypical heiresses, colorful locals, obnoxious Americans and such, but the real stars are Doan and his companion. Additionally, there is a bus driver who speaks delightful “school” English (correctly but in an over-the-top fashion) and steals his scenes; and the occasional period glimpses (Carstairs helps train army dogs for the ‘war effort’) add color and character. I suppose the one drawback would be that mystery fans these days expect to be able to solve the case along with the detective.
Ending out of nowhere
Davis’s ending comes out of nowhere in vein of “Actually, it was Professor Plumb! In the Library! With a candlestick!”
I did love the dog, though. The three novels in this series are definitely worth a read.
Norbert Davis was Ludwig Wittgenstein’s favourite author, though they never met. He’s certainly in my top ten. And it’s ‘Professor PLUM’ – as in the colour – at least it is in the Australian version.
Blackmask scanned the Norbert Davis books four years ago, and gave them away from early ’05 on. I know manybooks’ weekly downloads have fallen roughly in half since that guy finally came back, but come on, let’s preserve a bit of credibility here.
I wrote a piece about Amazon’s kindle books numbers as it shows on its website. The numbers of books being added is on a daily basis might seems encouraging (though DRMed), but when you compare number of books across categories between different days you might ask: where the books are being added. This is misleading to readers and Kindle buyers.