THE MOUSE IN THE MOUNTAIN

N.Y.: William Morrow and Co., Inc., 1943. FIRST EDITION OF THE AUTHOR'S FIRST NOVEL. Original yellow cloth , spine stamped in burgandy, light soiling to binding, erasure marking on front pastedown. Original dust jacket, not price clipped, $2.00 price at flap, lightly sunned at spine, some rubbing, light soiling, some foxing to fore-edges of jacket panels, with no nicks or chips out of jacket. SCARCE... Norbert Davis was among the most talented of all the writers who specialized in pulp fiction in the Thirties and early Forties. Although he was primarily a magazine writer (he graduated from the pulps to such slicks as The Saturday Evening Post in 1943, he published three mystery novels featuring the detective "team" of Doan and Carstairs. 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 hard-boiled story with farcical humor. The Mouse in the Mountain is the first of the adventures through which Doan and Carstairs prowl and howl. Doan is a private eye who looks fat but isn’t, and who, despite a great fondness for booze, has never suffered a hangover; Carstairs is an aloof, fawn-colored Great Dane whom Doan won in a crap game and who considers Doan a low, uncouth person, not at all the Sort’ he would have chosen for a master. The scene is Mexico, where Doan has come to persuade a fugitive crook not to return to the United States and give himself up, At least, that is what he tells the heroine of the piece, Janet Martin, a shy (at least in the beginning) schoolteacher in the Wisteria Young Ladies:Seminary. Doan, like Sam Spade, isn’t really as corrupt as he sometimes pretends. Things begin to happen at a fast and furious pace even before Doan and Carstairs arrive in the picturesque little village of Los Altos: A famous Mexican bandit named Garcia is on the loose and causing a great deal of consternation among the local authorities. But what happens later causes considerably more consternation: the town; s first earthquake in 150 years, which results in widespread destruction and chaos, and precipitates three cold-blooded murders. Doan solves the murders, of course, and restores peace and harmony to Los Altos-with not a little help from Carstairs and Janet Martin (who has also been kept busy falling in and out of love with a handsome but exasperating Mexican Army officer, Captain Emile Perona). Great fun from first page to last." -- 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller. This copy, although not marked as such, comes from tFirsts: The Library of Robin and Kathryn Smiley; publishers of Firsts Magazine. First Edition. Hardcover. Near Fine/Very Good-Near Fine. Book.