The Mouse in the Mountain

Well this one was a wonderful surprise. according to some online sources it's considered one of the few truly great comic crime novels and... those sources are absolutely right. The tubby, nondescript but possibly dangerous Doan and his snobbish, grumpy sidekick the great dane Carstairs are one of the great double acts in crime novel. The dialogue crackles, Davis has an absolutely brilliant way with brief descriptions of place and character and - wonder of wonders - it's a comic crime novel which not only is achingly funny but also works as a bit of detection. That Davis can match the two strands so ably in this tale of small town Mexican corruption, revolution, tourism and cultural theft is no small miracle. But that Davis also gets show more every single strand so wonderfully tied together so satisfyingly by the time the book ends is the real reason why I'm calling this nothing short of a masterpiece of it's kind. I hope the others books are as wonderfully fun as this. show less

Where has Norbert Davis been all my life? I can not believe that I have just discovered this very charming, funny writer with his hard-boiled detective from LA, Doan, and his side-kick Carstairs, a very very large Great Dane.

We all know that when it comes to detective duos, it is the sidekick that carries the show. Carstairs lives up to this reputation in excellent fashion.

The Mouse in the Mountain is apparently the first in this short series and I am eager to read the next one. In this, Doan and Carstairs find themselves in Mexico. Doan is being searched for a weapon, and that search also includes Carstairs. When the weapon isn't found Captain Perona says, "All right. Tell him to lie down again." "Boom," said Doan. Carstairs dropped on show more the floor with a thud and a grunt." show less

This was originally published in 1943, and I downloaded it almost entirely because of the Great Dane on the cover. I should have investigated it a little more closely – I went into it expecting something like a cozy mystery about a guy and his dog, and I got a deceptively harmless-looking detective who had zero issues with killing people and who lied 99% of the time.

The beginning of the book fit in nicely with what I thought it was. Doan was a slightly pudgy, harmless-looking detective who happened to be vacationing in Mexico with Carstairs, his Great Dane. Carstairs was highly intelligent and not nearly as badly behaved as Doan kept insisting he was. I'm more of a cat person, but I imagine that fans of large breed dogs would be show more amused by Doan's efforts to ensure that Carstairs would be allowed on the tour bus to Los Altos.

Doan's fellow tourists included: Mr. and Mrs. Henshaw; Mortimer, their annoying little snot of a son; Janet, a schoolteacher hoping to see the same places as her historical crush, Lieutenant Emile Perona; Patricia Van Osdel, an heiress; Maria, Patricia's maid; and Greg, Patricia's boyfriend (?). I realized that this was not going to be a cozy mystery when the tour bus made it to Los Altos and one of the first things Doan did was casually shoot a guy. Granted, the guy had a gun, but his utter calm and complete lack of hesitation were still somewhat off-putting. Then Mortimer, the nasty little monster, described the wound in great detail and probably would have poked the body with a stick if his mom hadn't dragged him away. I really hated Mortimer.

It wasn't long before Doan demonstrated that all his talk about being on vacation was an utter lie. He had a particular person he'd been hired to talk to. Then an earthquake hit and, in the chaos of the aftermath, several people were discovered to be dead or wounded under suspicious circumstances. Captain Perona (yes, related to the Lieutenant Emile Perona Janet had a crush on) immediately suspected Doan because he knew Doan's reputation for being more dangerous than he looked.

There were a lot of characters, and I only cared about a small number of them, which made it a little hard to keep everyone straight. Janet and Captain Perona were probably my favorite out of the whole bunch, especially when they were talking to each other. Janet was book smart but street stupid, and she simply could not believe that someone as pleasant as Doan might not be a nice and trustworthy guy. Captain Perona was frustrated with her naivete (so was I, especially after she basically handed herself to the villain) but admired her love of the local history and her ability to read his ancestor's diary, which even he hadn't been able to decipher. If Perona had phrased his interest in Janet differently (he basically said, “You're stupid but pretty, so I might want to marry you”), I might have rooted for them as a couple more.

The overall story didn't really interest me all that much. I think the only thing that kept me going was the flashes of humor, particularly during parts with Doan or Perona. Perona's open disdain for all things American was fun. For example:

"'He knows all about young ladies from the United States, because be went to school there.'

'Where?" Janet demanded. "What school?"

'A place called Harvard. It was very unfortunate, but we could do nothing about it,'

'Unfortunate?' Janet repeated. 'Why?'

'He is the third son, you see, and we could not afford to give him a good education.'

'Good... Why, Harvard is one of the finest universities in the United States!'

'As you say--in the United States.'" (86)

All in all, I'm not really sure how I feel about this book. I think it just wasn't a great fit for me. Doan was too much of a “gray area” guy for my tastes, and I couldn't work up enough interest in most of the other characters to care about the large number of them that were being killed or wounded. I don't know that I'll be reading the next book in the series.

(Original review, with read-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less

Perhaps the best Norbert Davis book is the one you read first. I have to say that this one wasn't as funny as Sally's in the Alley, perhaps because it is longer. The problem is not Davis's writing, which is always engaging, nor is it the wonderful man-dog detective team of Doan and Carstairs. The problem is the plotting. Don't misunderstand; there is a lot going on here, and the story makes sense. It just lacks a real narrative thread that engages the reader and creates suspense. Things just happen, one after another, and while they are clearly connected, there is no way for the reader to really know what the ultimate point is until it is all over. Not that it has that much of a point to begin with. Doan and Carstairs find themselves show more trapped in a small Mexican mountaintop village with a busload of tourists, including an heiress, her maid, her gigolo, a plumbing salesman and his wife and annoying little boy, and a female college history professor. There, they find themselves in the midst of mysterious goings on involving a rebel, a corrupt American politician on the run, the descendant of one of Cortez's men, and altogether too many other things to fit comfortably in one book without a better framework to hang them on. If you have read Davis's other work, you'll enjoy this and not have any trouble getting through it, but it's no classic. The best parts are the scenes where Doan and Carstairs work together to get out of impossible jams. They actually wouldn't be a bad team for a modern writer to revive.... show less

http://www.ruemorguepress.com/catalog/davis_mousein.html
There have been a lot of dogs in mystery fiction, from Baynard Kendrick’s guide dog to Virginia Lanier’s bloodhounds, but there’s never been one quite like Carstairs. Doan, a short, chubby Los Angeles private eye, won Carstairs in a craps game, but there never was any question as to who the boss was in this relationship. Carstairs isn’t just any Great Dane. He’s so big that Doan figures he really ought to be considered another species. He scorns baby talk and belly rubs—unless administered by a pretty girl—and growls whenever Doan has a drink. He growls a lot.

His full name is Dougal’s Laird Carstairs and as a sleuth he rarely barks up the wrong tree. He’s down in show more Mexico with Doan, ostensibly to convince a missing fugitive that he would do well to stay put. The case is complicated by three murders, assorted villains, and a horrific earthquake that cuts the mountainous little village of Los Altos off from the rest of Mexico.

Doan and Carstairs aren’t the only unusual visitors to Los Altos. There’s Patricia Van Osdel, a ravishing blonde whose father made millions from flypaper, and Captain Emile Perona, a Mexican policeman whose long-ago Spanish ancestor helped establish Los Altos. It’s that ancestor who brings teacher Janet Martin to Mexico along with a stolen book that may contain the key to a secret hidden for hundreds of years in the village church.

Written in the snappy hardboiled style of the day, The Mouse in the Mountain was first published in 1943 and followed by two other Doan and Carstairs novels. “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 hardboiled story with farcical humor.”—Bill Pronzini, 1001 Midnights. show less

SEL writes: Rare and good!