Pulp Pages: "Something For The Sweeper" by Norbert Davis

Pulp Pages spotlights the best of hardboiled and noir fiction of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s.

“The streets were dark with something more than night.” - Raymond Chandler

When the going gets tough, the tough get chilblains: “Jones limped up to the high counter and leaned on it with his elbow, looking as mysterious and hard-boiled as possible in view of the fact that his feet were hurting him more and more all the time.”

The characterization of the unassuming and self-deprecating detective in Norbert Davis’ short story “Something for the Sweeper” -- as a proverbial knight whose armor has lost a bit of its shine — is typical of the amusing mysteries of this unsung but prolific and versatile writer.

Though he was adept in writing darker war stories, adventure tales, and westerns, it was the distinctively droll mystery and detective stories submitted to the pulp magazines in the 1930s and 1940s that set Davis apart. The no-nonsense Black Mask published Davis’ more noirish and violent pieces, but his more whimsical and laugh-out-loud efforts found a home with other pulp pubs such as Dime Detective.

As the Illinois-born Davis found success with ever-increasing outlets for his short stories, he skipped out on taking the bar exam after finishing law school at Stanford. Instead, he moved to Los Angeles, for a time living a few doors down from Raymond Chandler, who was a big booster of this wit-steeped word-slinger. Davis joined up with other pulp masters to form a writer’s group called the Fictioneers, and got cracking on the wisecracks while sharpening the sardonic slang and simile-stamped cynicism that is part of the curriculum in the school of hardboiled knocks.

But far from being a parodic take on tough-guy lit, Davis’ case-hardened but breezy style carried more than enough substance in plot, theme, and characterization. In addition to a couple of magazine features, the Bail Bond Dodd series and the Max Latin novellas, Davis’ humor fueled, starting in 1943, three hardcover novels: Mouse In The Mountain, Sally’s In The Alley, and Oh, Murder Mine. Unfortunately, disappointing sales may have contributed to his despondency over his career before his suicide in 1949.

Norbert Davis lives on, however, in his many writings — the nuanced, near-noir quirkiness, too, as attested to indeed in “Something For The Sweeper,” from 1937. After all, our protagonist P.I. Is named “just plain Jones, J.P. Jones." "See," he goes on, "my mother had a lot of kids, and she always thought she ought to give them something fancy in the way of first names on account of there being lots of Joneses around.” As you might guess, after names such as Horatius, Alvimina, and Evangeline were depleted, mom’s imagination conked out and apathy kicked in for the twelfth child, our hapless hero.

Article Author: Gordon Hauptfleisch

Gordon Hauptfleisch is a Blogcritics Books Editor, freelance writer, and book reviewer for the San Diego Union Tribune. For many years he worked in and managed bookstores and record stores. Email him and he'll stop talking in the third-person.
…

Visit Gordon Hauptfleisch's author page — Gordon Hauptfleisch's Blog