I pick this up on a whim at the bookstore because it was only a dollar and change. I didn’t know anything about the book before reading it but I had heard the title before. I was shocked at the beginning because of how It just jumped right into things. But the storyline itself was very entertaining and it was a quick read. Although the ending was somewhat predictable I really enjoyed the overall story and characters and I would really like to read more from this author. ( )

Frank Chambers and Cora, one drifter that decided to take a permanent (as possible) post in a Greek restaurant and the other young, bored women that wants more in life but has to come to terms with life with her husband. One called nitro and the other called glycerin. On their own they are bearable, together - they are total mayhem.

In a manner of natural borne killers these two will fall in love, wildly, wildly passionate love that wont bring out the best in them but only the worse. Reason is very simple - they just do not know anything better, they are like adolescents, not thinking, just living on impulse, kicking everything around and only stopping to think when damage is already done.

So it is not strange that their passion gives birth to something dark and terrible, something that will ultimately destroy them both.

Short read but very interesting one. Quite a page turner.

Highly recommended to all fans of crime and noir novels. ( )

Maybe good plot (guess it was as supposedly used as the basis for "The Stranger" which is also a drag). Without seemingly any morals, a drifter falls in love with the wife of a Greek restaurant owner who took him in. Frank and Cora plan to kill the husband and take off but the planned murder goes bad. Husband is clueless. They try again and succeed. When they are arrested, the prosecution and defense get into this weird back and forth situation. Cora confesses, then she doesn't; he is free; then he's not. Eventually they are both freed only to have a terrible car accident which kills Cora and he is convicted. There are cats, lots of rambling dialogue, and maybe sort of interesting in places. ( )

Published in the same year as A Handful of Dust, which by chance I read immediately before, I find it difficult to understand why this book remains so hyped in literary circles. Obviously influenced by Hemingway its limitations only point to the superiority of say 'To Have and Have Not'. There are multiple issues with the Harry Morgan stories (‘of their time’ doesn’t adequately cover it) of course, but honestly Cain’s sexism and misogyny really weigh against any virtues the book may have, particularly if you then add a faintly ludicrous narrative and no attempt at all at psychological realism. Maybe Cain would have been better using Evelyn Waugh as a model :) ( )

It is the 1930s and the country is still in the throes of the Depression. Frank, a drifter who has made little of his life, stumbles into a roadside dinner in rural California outside of Los Angeles. He cons the owner, a Greek immigrant named Nick, to get a free meal and ends up staying on to work for a while. Frank and Cora, Nick’s beautiful but dissatisfied younger wife, soon fall for one another and begin a clandestine affair. As their relationship deepens, Frank and Cora consider running off together, but ultimately decide that killing Nick would be the best solution. Although their first attempt fails, it manages to put them on the radar of the police and prosecutors, who suspect the accidental blow to the head that Nick received was intentional. After their second attempt involving a staged car accident is successful, Frank and Cora appear to have achieved their dream, but the reality of what they did soon begins to haunt them. When Frank begins an affair with another woman behind Cora’s back, the romance between the two unravels completely and places them both on the path to their tragic ultimate destinies.

The publication of The Postman Always Rings Twice ensured author James M. Cain’s place as a master of the hardboiled detective fiction genre, alongside contemporary writers such as Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye) and Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man). Unlike the stories of those other luminaries, though, the tale Cain tells here really has no detection process at all; as readers, we know right away what’s going to happen, who’s going to do it, and how it all is likely to end. What makes this novel distinctive, then, are the deep psychological themes it develops involving the multitude of deceptions that each character displays at almost every turn. (The title itself is an allusion to the imminent arrival of bad news when it is least expected, but most deserved.) As such, this is a historically important work that has influenced many subsequent novelists, both for its noirish style and technique as well as for its content. What it is not, unfortunately, is a particularly interesting or compelling story. Perhaps due to its brevity, the protagonists are not fully realized to where we end up caring what happens to them, much less understand why they commit some of the actions they do. So, while I do not regret the short amount of time it took to read, this is not a book that I would recommend with any sense of urgency. ( )