Description
These three classics from the master of the noir novel, along with five otherwise unavailable short stories, are electric with the taut narrative voice, the suspense, and the explosive violence and eroticism that were James M. Cain’s indelible hallmarks.
The Postman Always Rings Twice, Cain’s first novel–the subject of an obscenity trial in Boston, the inspiration for Camus’s The Stranger–is the fever-pitched tale of a drifter who stumbles into a job, into an erotic obsession, and into a murder. Double Indemnity–which followed Postman so quickly, Cain’s readers hardly had a chance to catch their breath–is a tersely narrated story of blind passion, duplicity, and, of course, murder. Mildred Pierce, a work of acute psychological observation and devastating emotional violence, is the tale of a woman with a taste for shiftless men and an unreasoned devotion to her monstrous daughter. All three novels were immortalized in classic Hollywood films. Also included here are five masterful stories–“Pastorale,” “The Baby in the Icebox,” “Dead Man,” “Brush Fire,” “The Girl in the Storm”–that have been out of print for decades.
About the Author
James Mallahan Cain (July 1, 1892–October 27, 1977) was an American journalist and novelist. Although Cain himself vehemently opposed labeling, he is usually associated with the hard-boiled school of American crime fiction and seen as one of the creators of the "roman noir."He was born into an Irish Catholic family in Annapolis, Maryland, the son of a prominent educator and an opera singer. He inherited his love for music from his mother, but his high hopes of starting a career as a singer himself were thwarted when she told him that his voice was not good enough.After graduating from Washington College where his father, James W. Cain served as president, in 1910, he began working as a journalist forThe Baltimore Sun.He was drafted into the United States Army and spent the final year of World War I in France writing for an Army magazine. On his return to the United States he continued working as a journalist, writing editorials for theNew York Worldand articles forAmerican Mercury. He also served briefly as the managing editor ofThe New Yorker, but later turned to screenplays and finally to fiction.Although Cain spent many years in Hollywood working on screenplays, his name only appears on the credits of three films,Algiers,Stand Up and Fight, andGypsy Wildcat.His first novel (he had already publishedOur Governmentin 1930),The Postman Always Rings Twicewas published in 1934. Two years later the serialized, inLiberty Magazine,Double Indemnitywas published.He made use of his love of music and of the opera in particular in at least three of his novels:Serenade(about an American opera singer who loses his voice and who, after spending part of his life south of the border, re-enters the States illegally with a Mexican prostitute in tow),Mildred Pierce(in which, as part of the subplot, the only daughter of a successful businesswoman trains as an opera singer) andCareer in C Major(a short semi-comic novel about the unhappy husband of an aspiring opera singer who unexpectedly discovered that he has a better voice than she does).He continued writing up to his death at the age of 85. His last three published works,The Baby in the Icebox(1981),Cloud Nine(1984) andThe Enchanted Isle(1985) being published posthumously. However, the many novels he published from the late 1940s onward never quite rivaled his earlier successes.
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