Sand In The Snow by Norbert Davis

Book Details

When workaholic attorney Jim Daniels takes a mid-winter vacation to Southern California to placate his wife, he steps into a nightmare of murder and a years-old secret of fraud and corruption.

Sand In The Snow  (1939)- California has snow-capped peaks and burning sandy wastes—and Jim Daniels, following the threads of the strangest case he ever undertook, found that sudden and violent death was apt to occur in both climates. In fact, peril seemed to travel in the wake of the Young Millionaire with the Scarred Face, ready to pounce at any moment. An exciting novel of a brilliant young attorney’s midwinter vacation from safety.
Chapter I – The Lady Takes A Gun
Chapter II – The Lawyer Takes A Trip
Chapter III – The Prince Takes Dinner
Chapter IV – The Kid Takes A Chance
Chapter V – Death Takes One

Part 2 – What Came Before
Chapter VI – Jim Takes Steps
Chapter VII – Daniels Takes The Cue
Chapter VIII – The Politico Takes A Partner
Chapter IX – The Defense Takes The Count

Part 3 – What Came Before
Chapter X – The Ladies Take To Fisticuffs
Chapter XI – A Gag-Man Takes A Drink
Chapter XII – The Defense Takes A Tumble
Chapter XIII – The Doctor Takes the Rap
Chapter XIV – Dak Hassan Takes Notice
Chapter XV – The Judge Takes Offense

Part 4 – What Came Before
Chapter XVI – The Defense Takes Exception
Chapter XVII – The Judge Takes A Rest
Chapter XVIII – The Corpse Takes A Dive
Chapter XIX – Daniels Takes A Bow

Part 5 – Conclusion
Chapter XX –  Witness Takes The Stand
Chapter XXI – The Court Takes A Rest
Chapter XXII – Foley Takes A Look
Chapter XXIII – The Sheriff Takes His Man

Norbert Davis (1909-1949) was born in Illinois, but at the beginning of the Great Depression moved with his family to California, where he studied law at Stanford. He was first published in Black Mask in 1932. In 1934, when he graduated from Stanford Law School he had had a great deal of success getting works published and so he decided to continue with his writing and never took his bar exams. He committed suicide in 1949 after moving to Connecticut. Sand In The Snow was published in five parts in Argosy Magazine in 1939.

Sand In The Snow contains 6 illustrations.

Files:

1. SandInTheSnow.epub

Excerpt: Sand In The Snow

Chapter I

The Lady Takes A Gun

IT was his wife’s mink coat that started the whole thing. Jim Daniels had no reason to get mad about it. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have. It just came at the wrong time. He admitted all that later, but by then it was too late. The ball was already rolling down its swift, disastrous path.

Late on that decisive afternoon, he was sitting in his office reading over his latest copy of the Supreme Court’s Advance Reports. The crook-necked lamp on his desk was on, and pooled the light in a greenish cone that glistened back from the pages of the Report, and profiled the hard-cut strength of his features. His eyes smarted from the fine print, and he had one hand up shading them. He was thin with high, square-set shoulders, and even in repose he gave a greyhoundish effect of restless, hard-driving energy, of unquenchable and impatient ambition.

Cora Sue Daniels opened the door softly and peeked at him around its edge. She was wearing a hat that looked like an exaggerated felt stocking cap.

“Hello, dear. Plunk said you were alone.”

Daniels marked his place with a forefinger and looked up. “Hello, Cora Sue. Come in.”

She crossed the office, leaned over the desk and kissed him, brushing his forehead with lips that were soft and cool and possessive. Daniels raised his hand and dabbed automatically at the spot. He had learned from experience that his wife’s lips were likely to leave an indelible red mark on anything they touched.

Cora Sue twisted the neck of the lamp until it reflected on her slim, small person like a spotlight. “This is my new coat, Jim. Isn’t it sweet?”

Jim winced at the choice of the adjective and watched her obediently as she twirled slowly around, holding the coat away from her and then close to her body, and then posing with a mannequin’s occupational hauteur, her head tilted back.

“It’s nice,” Daniels said absently.

His adjective wasn’t good either. Nice . . . The furs were deep and rich and gleaming, perfectly matched, perfectly shaded. Daniels was reflecting that it probably cost just a about twice as much as he had made in the last year. But that wasn’t his affair. He didn’t have to pay for it.

Cora Sue’s father, A. J. Bancroft, had settled a ten-million-dollar trust fund on her when she was eighteen. The income from the trust was irrevocably and completely hers.

Daniels didn’t take to the idea. That and the other hundred odd million that A. J. Bancroft could shake out of his sleeve if the occasion demanded had come very close to preventing the marriage of Daniels and Cora Sue. Daniels was no fool. He liked money just as well as anyone else. But he knew that when a hundred odd million is concentrated in one fortune it ceases to be merely money. It attains a new identity. It becomes a responsibility, and a very great one. Such a responsibility, in fact, that the sheer mass of it is liable to dwarf and absorb the personality of anyone closely connected with it.

Excerpt From: Norbert Davis. “Sand In The Snow.”