Norbert Harrison Davis (April 18, 1909 - July 28, 1949) was an
American crime fiction author.
Norbert Davis was born in
Morrison,
Illinois, where he grew up. At the end of the 1920s his family moved to Southern California and by the end of 1934 he was to receive his law degree from
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
but never bothered to take the bar exam. He started writing short stories for ''
Black Mask'' in 1932 and lived in the
Los Angeles area. He also contributed to
Dime Detective',
',
', ''
Argosy
Argosy or The Argosy may refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media
* ''Argosy'' (magazine), an American pulp magazine 1882–1978 and revived 1990–1994, 2004–2006
* ''Argosy'' (UK magazine), three British magazines
* Argosy spaceship in ''Escap ...
'', and ''
The Saturday Evening Post''. From 1943 he published the detective novels ''The Mouse in the Mountain'' (Morrow 1943) (also published in paperback under the titles ''Rendezvous with Fear'' and ''Dead Little Rich Girl''), ''Sally's in the Alley'' (Morrow 1943), ''Oh, Murderer Mine'' (Quinn Publishing 1946), all three novels featuring Doan, a private investigator, and Carstairs, a
Great Dane.
[Server, Lee (2002)]
''Encyclopedia of Pulp Fiction Writers''
pp. 77-79. Facts on File, Inc. Retrieved 28 April 2014. His ''Murder Picks the Jury'' (Samuel Curl 1947) was written in collaboration with
W. T. Ballard under the authorship 'Harrison Hunt'.
A complete collection of his Max Latin stories from ''Dime Detective'' called ''The Complete Cases of Max Latin'' was published in 2014 by Altus Press. A complete collection of his Doan and Carstairs stories ''Doan and Carstairs: Their Complete Cases'' was published by Altus Press in 2016. 'The Adventures of Max Latin' was put out by Mysterious Press in 1988.
Davis's writing was greatly admired by
Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Davis died on July 28, 1949, an apparent suicide following a diagnosis of cancer.
[
]
See also
* Detective Story Magazine
*Frances Crane
Frances Kirkwood Crane (October 27, 1890 – November 6, 1981) was an American Mystery fiction, mystery author, who introduced private investigator Pat Abbott and his future wife Jean in her first novel, ''The Turquoise Shop'' (1941). The Abbott ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Davis, Norbert
1909 births
1949 deaths
20th-century American novelists
American male novelists
American mystery writers
People from Morrison, Illinois
Stanford Law School alumni
Novelists from Illinois
20th-century American male writers
1949 suicides
Suicides in Massachusetts
Suicides by carbon monoxide poisoning