![]() ![]() “I make no conscious effort to be tough, or hard-boiled, or grim,” Cain once noted of his own writing, “or any of the things I am usually called. It is a piercing piece of work, a ruthless saga of betrayal, in which the worst sins are those the characters commit against themselves. In 119 unrelenting pages, Cain not only indicts middle-class greed and shallowness, he also paints a considerably darker portrait of a man and a woman consumed by their desires. His first novel, “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” published when he was 42, is said to have inspired Albert Camus’ “The Stranger” his second, “Double Indemnity,” is among the finest of all American novels, regardless of genre or style. That’s because Cain was not just a great hard-boiled novelist but a great novelist, period, whose vision of 1930s Southern California is as acute and resonant as anything ever written about that time and place. ![]() ![]() Of all the classic noir writers, perhaps none has been as tarnished by the brush of genre as James M. Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close Menu ![]()
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