Norbert Davis is one of the authors I was introduced to in the legendary, Ron Goulart-edited anthology THE HARDBOILED DICKS in the Sixties. I’ve been reading and enjoying Davis’s work off and on ever since. He’s best remembered for his hardboiled yet humorous mysteries, but he wrote other kinds of stories for the pulps, too, including straight adventure. One such example is the novelette “Dead Man’s Chest”, originally published in the November 1936 issue of THRILLING ADVENTURES.
The protagonist of this yarn is drifting adventurer Poco Kelly (a great name if
I’ve ever seen one). A character in this story refers to him as a soldier of
fortune, but Kelly immediately corrects that to “soldier, but no fortune”. He
finds himself in a small town on Mexico, rescuing a beautiful American girl
being pursued by sinister stalkers, getting mixed up in a torture killing,
clashing with a vicious criminal, and getting captured by a gang of bandits,
all while trying to locate a map (drawn on a piece of tanned human skin, no
less) that’ll lead him and the beautiful girl to a fortune in gold.
There’s nothing in “Dead Man’s Chest” that we haven’t seen before, but the key
to its appeal is in Davis’s handling of the material. And luckily, he does a
great job of it. His prose is fast and vivid and action-packed, Poco Kelly is a
very likable protagonist, and there are just enough touches of humor to remind
you that you’re reading a story by Norbert Davis. And then, at the very end of
the story, he throws in a nice twist that I wasn’t expecting. It put a grin on
my face, too.
I really enjoyed “Dead Man’s Chest”. It’s a very solid pulp adventure tale that
I found well worth reading. It’s available in a stand-alone e-book edition from
Wildside Press with an informative and entertaining introduction by publisher
John Betancourt. (I had no idea until I read the introduction that Davis was
married to mystery author Frances Crane. I have most, if not all, of Crane’s
novels about married sleuths Pat and Jean Abbott, but I’ve never read any of
them. I can’t help but wonder if Davis had any influence on them. I’ve got to
get around to trying those.)
4 comments:
I'm a big fan of his Doan & Carstairs stories.
Norbert Davis was an under-rated and under-appreciated creator of escapist fiction who sadly took his own life at the age of 40. I particularly like an incident about him recorded by his fellow fictioneer E. Hoffman Price. Davis as an undergraduate took a few writing classes during which an instructor roundly condemned one of his early pieces of work. Davis stood up in class — "an imposing figure, if absurdly thin, at six feet five inches" — and pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. "Sir, this is a check for $200 from ARGOSY. The editor didn’t find much fault with my story." The instructor wasn’t impressed, pointing out that they weren’t in class to learn how to make money writing but to learn how to appreciate literary merit. Needless to say, I'm one of the many today who continue to appreciate Davis' classic fiction through eBook reissues.
"Dead Man's Chest" is a great story. Fun in that way only good adventure pulp can be. I think Frances Crane was Davis's mother-in-law. His wife was Nancy Kirkwood Crane.
Thanks, Ben. That makes sense.
Post a Comment