James M. Cain (1892–1977)

"The Postman Always Rings Twice" doesn't muck around, there are no purple passages from James M. Cain. Frank and Cora are credible as reckless noir anti-heroes, low in empathy but not completely unlikable. Nick the Greek, Cora's husband, is a likable dumbo. Drifter Frank starts working at Nick's service station and diner and from there the trouble begins. Frank starts having it off with Cora and they plan Nick's downfall. Frank is the narrator and the one with the criminal past, but Cora, show more who has a mean streak, will be his equal at every turn. While she hates Nick with a vengeance, Frank actually quite likes the Greek and enjoys singing and getting drunk with him.

Cora and Frank’s love, to a point genuine, has a sadistic tinge to it and you know it can't end well. As the whiff of crime comes to hang about the lovers, business at the diner picks up - an insightful piece of writing. A couple of sleazy lawyers enter the scene after the main crescendo of action, and their manipulations of the case(s) against Cora and Frank make sure that the story continues to accelerate. When I mention the main action, it’s pretty easy to figure out what that’s about, but I won’t state it explicitly here. With things getting tough, Cora and Frank descend into paranoia, they watch each other like hawks, it's hard to say if love or hate will win out.

I haven't seen the movie, Jack Nicholson was an obvious choice for Frank though. The novel reads like a script - complete with pool room and hospital bed scenes, road accidents, a near drowning and strange animal cameos: first from a domestic cat that gets fried by a fuse box and then a puma cub given to Frank. The final twist is not genius, but this is a well plotted thriller - it's so straight forward and clean with its dialogue and story development - it takes a disciplined writer to put something like this together. Informal speech from the 1930s is, I would guess, accurately reproduced, and there were a few terms I had to look up - such as "hash house", which was a cheap, sleazy restaurant - rather than somewhere to buy marijuana. Short, you could read it in a single sitting and as to the title, to solve the enigma write an email to the James M. Cain appreciation society maybe?

Update: just watched 1946 movie version with Lana Turner and John Garfield, very good and pretty faithful to the book. It explicitly explains the title, which wasn't necessary in the book but film audiences are different. The background in the opening credits is the cover of the novel, they don't do that these days! show less

The style is sharp, confident, and atmospheric in a way only Cain seems to manage — the kind of prose that pulls you along even when the story itself makes you tense in a way you didn’t expect.

And I’ll be honest:
I do want to know how this ends.
Cain knows how to hook a reader with structure alone.

But then there’s John Howard Sharp, the narrator — and that’s where the entire experience collapses for me.

I can handle flawed protagonists. I can handle moral rot, arrogance, cruelty, show more delusion — I read horror, noir, and the darker end of literary fiction. None of that is new or intimidating. But John Howard Sharp’s worldview is something else entirely. It’s not just dated; it’s suffocating. His opinions about women, desire, talent, and his own supposed brilliance are so self-satisfied and so casually dehumanizing that I couldn’t tolerate another page inside his head.

Cain’s skill is undeniable.
Sharp’s worldview is intolerable.

It’s a strange reading experience — admiring the writing while recoiling from the narrator. But for me, that’s the line. I can respect a book’s craft and still choose not to live in its consciousness.

So yes, I loved the style.
Yes, I was curious about the ending.
But no, I will not read another page of John Howard Sharp’s internal monologue.

This one simply isn’t for me. show less

What a fantastic book. At just over 100 pages it feels as full as a book three times its size, with enough turns to keep things unpredictable the entire time. The noir sex & violence doesn't feel forced like in many later adaptations, the spiralling romance and tension is the backbone of the story, not thrown in titillation. It feels like it could have had a dozen different endings along the way, and you're almost torn between wanting to see someone make it out or to have them all punished show more for their sins. As the foreword notes, despite noir being adopted and immortalized by Hollywood, they couldn't actually put to screen what Cain wrote even decades after morality rules and an attempt to ban the work.
Notes on the edition: One of the slimmest FS volumes, yet richly and fittingly illustrated (but don't look up the illustrations as they spoil the main story beats). Fully bound in cloth with a blocked design, Abby Wove paper. show less

I had trepidations about reading Cain because, as one of the first (THE first?) hard-boiled crime writers, he has been copied so many times I thought the original might seem like a parody of itself. You know, like when you go back and watch an early Mafia movie like Mean Streets and it has been ripped off so many times that it seems stale.

But, not to fear. The writing pops, the plot zips along, the whole thing is perfect noir. I read all three straight through. Now I feel like drinking rye show more and socking anyone who cracks wise. show less