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RARA-AVIS: Review: The Adventures of Max Latin by Norbert Davis 

BOOK REVIEW:

The Adventures of Max Latin, by Norbert Davis; Mysterious Press, 1988. 
Introduction by John D. MacDonald. ISBN 0-89296-932-6.

Contents:

*Watch me kill you
*Don't give your right name
*You can die any day
*Give the devil his due
*Charity begins at Homicide.

As John D. MacDonald notes in his excellent introduction to this 
collection of five Davis novellas, Norbert Davis never achieved widespread
recognition by the general public; nowadays his work is known mainly to
mystery specialists and pulp fiction fans. His output consists of a very
large number of stories and novellas written for the pulp market, a few
published in the "slicks", and three novels, all of them long out of 
print in the United States. His suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in 1949
at the age of forty marked the end of a career that, while fairly 
successful financially, never had the luster or critical recognition of
Chandler's or Hammett's. Yet his stories have been chosen over 
and over for reissue in mystery anthologies, where they are periodically 
"rediscovered" by new generations. Not only does Davis not pale in the 
company of recognized luminaries like Hammett, Chandler, or Paul Cain, but he 
speaks in a distinctly original voice, sprinkled with a very particular, modern 
brand of humor (with marked mockery of the genre itself), and an accomplished 
style that distances him considerably from the pack of pulp writers - a
hard-working group estimated by some at over 1200 writers in the heyday of
the genre.

The five novellas collected in the present volume all originally appeared 
in Dime Detective between 1941 and 1943; Max Latin owns a restaurant, in 
which a booth serves as the office out of which he works as an all-purpose 
consultant.If you want something stolen, Max will do it for a fee; he can
also be hired to murder, extort, rob, threaten, lie - and investigate. He is
constantly in and out of jail. Latin is seconded in his exploits by master
chef Guiterrez - an exquisite cook who despises the clientele and is viciously
and deliberately rude to them, not deeming them worthy of his art and 
forever hoping they'll disappear - and a cast of bizarre waiters who double
as backup heavies, snoops,and alibi-providers whenever there is trouble.

In these fast-paced stories trouble settles in quickly, usually no later 
than the second page.  Thus in "Watch me kill you", Latin is hired by a rich 
heiress's husband to convince her cousin, a talented artist, to sell her 
some of his paintings. The catch: years before she had refused to help finance 
her cousin's art studies in Paris; mortally offended, the painter has become 
her enemy and made her a laughing stock among art collectors by making it 
impossible for her to buy any of his work. The adventure that ensues is built 
around the painter's mysterious murder, and is filled with crackling dialogue
and double entendres, not reaching a resolution until the last page. The 
remaining novellas are every bit as good, with a high-point in "Give the devil
his due", a riotously funny tale of disappearance, greed, and deceit among
the rich.

If you have never heard of Davis, you owe it to yourself to make his 
acquaintance by reading about master crook Max Latin. If you have, here 
is an essential addition to the bibliography of a writer who wrote against 
formula and got away with it, time after time.

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Reviewed by Mario Taboada (C) 1997  

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