"Dead. Murdered. Stabbed in the Back."

NORBERT DAVIS can justifiably be grouped with the "hard-boiled screwball" school of detective fiction writers such as Craig Rice, who were more concerned with pushing the story along and the devil take the inconsistencies, inserting at times their own peculiar brand of logic into the narrative—which is no knock against them, however, because they could produce truly entertaining stories on a regular basis. Since the majority of Norbert Davis's output conformed to that pattern, we were mildly surprised by the following story, in which a crime gets solved according to . . .

"The Lethal Logic."

By Norbert Davis (1909-49).

First appearance: Detective Fiction Weekly, April 29, 1939.

Reprinted in Dark Lessons (1985).

Short story (11 pages).

Online at Roy Glashan's Library (HTML HERE).

   "It won't take me more than a couple of hours. It's a stupidly simple problem."

"A couple of hours," he says—but he does it, when the solution of a murder of a 

student in a law school university's library proves susceptible of straightforward 

logical thinking. From what we've been reading, we're not sure whether Wittgen-

stein would approve or be disappointed . . .

Principal characters:

~ Langdon:

  ". . . missed being murdered by just those three steps."

~ Carlson:

  "My God! You don't mean to tell me that any modern police officer follows that antiquated bit of flubdub. Cherchez la femme! Faugh! It makes me sick!"

~ Vaster:

  "Carlson, watching him as he talked, thought he could see the small, dull brain behind the slope of Vaster's skull, see it actually groping around in the mist, blindly and stubbornly trying to find and follow Carlson's logical path."

~ Dieckmann:

  ". . . had a mind as sharp as a razor. He was sitting on the top of the steps, absently smoking a pipe."

~ Janice Lee:

  ". . . came around the corridor at the end of the last stack. She was a small girl with smooth, blue-black hair. Her face was very white and smooth, and her soft, small lips framed a whispered answer to Carlson's greeting."

~ Reeve:

  ". . . was slumped down in the chair. He bent forward slowly from the waist until his face bumped against the book he had on his lap."

~ Dean Michels:

  "'What—' Michels began, and then his big, loose face seemed to stretch grotesquely. 'Dead! You said—'"

~ Lieutenant Harms:

  "I got to arrest somebody—quick."

~ Dogan:

  ". . . looked like the movie version of a gangster's bodyguard except for the fact that he was cross-eyed and wore thick glasses."  

Resources:

- This is our first full-on encounter with the fiction of Norbert Davis, who, sad to say, committed suicide. For all the details about our author, see Wikipedia (HERE), Black Mask (HERE), The New Thrilling Detective (HERE), The GAD Wiki (HERE), and the ISFDb (HERE).

- Davis had a tenuous connection with the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who had an affinity for detective stories. See Josef Hoffmann's Mystery*File article (HERE) and the extensive Wikipedia article about Wittgenstein (HERE).

- Roy Glashan has a fine developing collection of Davis's novels, novelettes, and short stories (HERE) in both HTML and EPUB formats.

Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.

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