Customer Reviews

Double Indemnity (A Lythway book)

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Walter Huff is a pretty decent and basically honest insurance salesman, until he meets Phyllis Nirdlinger, the wife of a successful California businessman. Phyllis isn't the most attractive woman, but she's a true seductress. Huff immediately knows that Phyllis will be trouble, but he can't resist her, and she quickly involves him in a plot to kill her husband. Things become even more complicated when Phyllis' step-daughter, Lola, enters the scene and bonds with Huff.

James M. Cain is one of the indisputable greats of crime noir novels, and he also wrote the terrific "The Postman Always Rings Twice." The plot is fast-moving, and I love Cain's stattaco writing style. He also includes so much great detail, such as the "blood red curtains" in Phyllis' living room. Further, Cain makes the action very believable and doesn't overlook any plot holes, which is not always the case in this genre. I really liked this book.

Having said that, I think that the movie (1944, directed by the peerless Billy Wilder) is even better than the book. I know that's blasphemous, but the movie is one of the all-time great American movies. Read the book and don't miss the movie either!

James Cain followed up his controversial THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE with another thin crime novel DOUBLE INDEMNITY. Like POSTMAN, it brings the reader into a world of moral indifference. In other words, it's great!

The action follows insurance agent Walter Huff, who has at some point come up with an insurance scheme to off a guy and collect the insurance. He discovers his partner in crime, Phyllis Nirdlinger, when she inquires about accident insurance for her husband. But this is James Cain writing. It is not going to be that easy, is it? You bet not.

Phyllis turns out to be way, waaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyy more dangerous than Walter ever imagined her to be. He learns too late that he is just one more patsy in Phyllis's own plans, much bigger and nastier than the ones Walter himself formulated. Complicating the matter is Phyllis's step-daughter, Lola, whose wholesomeness actually touches some soft spot in Walter's heart.

Perhaps Cain mellowed a little bit between POSTMAN and DOUBLE INDEMNITY. The main character actually feels some degree of guilt for the crime and actually shows concern for someone besides himself. Jeez, what a softie. Do not worry, though. There is enough human darkness here to satisfy even the hardest of readers' hearts.

Walter Neff is a bored insurance salesman who fantisizes of ways to cheat the company by committing the perfect murder, without ever doing anything about it. Phyllis Nardlinger is a Hollywoodland housewife who is quietly psychotic, (complete with a fantasy of being the angel of death,) has killed before and will kill again. Just because you've seen the movie, don't think you know the book. Still shocking after nearly seventy years after publication!! POSTMAN is great but this one's greater!

In many ways, DOUBLE INDEMNITY is POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE redux -- the main exception being that POSTMAN's greasy spoon is replaced by a cozy upper middle class Spanish suburban house. In both books, a man is inspired by a sexy, discontented married woman into murdering hubby for gain.

POSTMAN's drifter is now a cocky insurance salesman (Walter Huff) who thinks he can both beat the odds and get the girl (Phyllis Nirdlinger), and -- why not? -- her daughter Lola as well. If you know anything about Greek tragedy, you can bet that the hubris mechanism is ready to spring into action with jaws agape.

James M Cain writes a tight novella that can easily be consumed in a single sitting. It's just that you feel you've been watching cockroaches mate from a great height. Few of Cain's novels show the least sign of sentiment, let alone liking, towards their characters. Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder's script for the film is actually far superior because the character of Keyes is developed into a moral center around which the story unrolls. (It also helps that Cain's INDEMNITY has a really gonzo ending.)

Nonetheless, Cain is what he is -- and his stories are always worth reading. But do see the Billy Wilder movie version!

'Double Indemnity' by James Cain is about a big time insurance fraud involving murder. The story takes place in 1920s Los Angeles with the criminals being an insurance agent and a beautiful, wealthy wife. Sounds trite? In a sense it is, but the actual crime is very clever. And James Cain milks the suspense wonderfully. Unfortunately the books is very short, with the author skipping out on the details (background) of the main characters and their motivation for the dirty deed. At times the book felt like a Reader's Digest version of a full novel.

Yet 'Double Indemnity' is a fine read. Not on par with the author's best ('Mildred Pierce', 'The Postman Always Rings Twice') but still among the better in the genre.

Although not published in book form until 1943, James M. Cain (1892 -1977) wrote "Double Indemnity" in 1936, just after his other short masterful noir novel "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1934) Both these novels became celebrated movies. I read the books together to try to get some understanding of Cain's art and of the noir genre.

As is Cain's earlier book, "Double Indemnity" is set in Los Angeles in the 1930s and is a tale of violence and murder heavily influenced by sex. Both books are told in the first person by a perpetrator of the crimes nearing the end of his life. The men in both books are seduced by a femme fatale who wishes to be rid of a husband.

There are differences in the books. The "Postman Always Rings Twice" involves people at the lower reaches of society, a wandering, penniless drifter together with a young frustrated woman married to an older man, "the Greek", who operates a run-down gas station and restaurant. The supporting characters also are drawn from low life. The book has a strong sense of place. The descriptions of the shabbier sections of Los Angeles and its environs are as important to the book as its story of lust and murder.

In contrast, "Double Indemnity" is far more psychological and probes deeper into the inner lives of its characters. The sense of place is less important that it is in "Postman". Furthermore, "Double Indemnity" involves crime and lust among the middle and upper classes rather than by those on the margins. The main character and narrator, Walter Huff, age 34, is a modestly successful insurance salesman. His victim, Nirdlinger, is a succesful oil and gas executive. The femme fatale is Nirdlinger's wife Phylis, in her early thirties. Phylis seduces Nirdlinger to sell her husband an accident insurance policy and to participate in murdering Nirdlinger. Because the policy pays a double indemnity for accidents occurring on a railroad, Huff and Phyllis stage a scenario under which Nirdlinger appears to lose his life in an accident on a passenger train.

Unlike "Postman", "Double Indemnity" has a subplot involving Nirdlinger's daughter from a previous marriage, Cora, age 19, and her boyfriend, Beniamino Sachetti, 26, a student working on his doctorate in chemistry. The book has strong themes of sexual jealousy as Sachetti appears to be involved both with Cora and with Cora's stepmother Phyllis. Huff too is motivated to the murder by his desire for Phyllis, but he develops an almost innocent love in the course of the story for Cora.

Insurance policies are important in "Postman" but even more so in this book, as Huff's company struggles to find a way out of paying the $50,000 double indemnity for Nirdlinger's apparent accident. The aging, jowly, shrewd and cynical claims adjuster, Keyes, finds a way of unravelling what appears to be a flawless crime.

The story is narrated in a taut, laconic style with moments of reflectiveness from Huff as he comes to understand himself and his fate. I did not find Huff an innocent or unwilling participant in the actions described in the book. Rather, he is on the lookout for the main chance and takes the initiative from the outset in proposing and planning the murder of Nirdlinger. Early in the book, Cain gives Huff a long and revealing soliloquy in which he compares his life as an insurance agent with that of a roulette croupier. He says "I lie awake night thinking up tricks, so I'll be ready for them when they come at me. And then one night I think up a trick, and get to thinking I could crook the wheel myself if I could only put a plant out there to put down my bet. That's all. When I met Phyllis, I met my plant." (pp23-24)

Huff also understands Phyllis early in their relationship. He quotes her: "There's something in me that loves Death." I think of myself as death, sometimes. in a scarlet shroud, floating through the night. I's so beautiful, then. And sad. And hungry to make the whole world happy, by taking them out where I am, into the night, away from all trouble, all unhappiness." (p. 18) As the novel unfolds, Huff learns that there were depths to Phylis' murderous, violent character of which he was unaware when the couple formed their plot to kill Nirdlinger.

The story unfolds with a great deal of tension and inner logic as the complex elements of the plots are pulled together. The book offers a tough-minded portrayal of the consequences of greed, hatred, and lust, but it offers a hint of the possibility of love as well.

I enjoyed getting to know both these early books of James Cain, "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and "Double Indemnity". Although sometimes patronized as "pulp" writing, these are serious, well-written novels worthy of a place in American literature.

Robin Friedman

In many of the reviews for Double Indemnity, you will find it called a novel or a fiction piece. In reality, James Cain wrote Double Indemnity about the 1920's murder case of Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray, who together killed Snyder's wealthy husband. Billy Wilder made it into a film and a broadway play. Richard Schiekel also wrote a mystery based on the story. Snyder's trip to the electric chair was one of the most famous executions of the century, because a photographer strapped a camera to his ankle and photographed Ruth Snyder in the chair as the current surged through her body. It then was published on the front of The New York Daily News and became a most famous photo of the decade.

At some point, the narrator of James M. Cain's "Double Indemnity" starts a chapter stating "there is nothing so dark as a railroad track in the middle of the night". The scene that is set in the railroad track is one of the most important in this novella noir about love, deceit and betrayal. It is not impossible to make some connections between this mentioned dark and the dark side of the human soul.

This is a short book and very fast, and, at the same time, very interesting. Cain makes his characters and plot very engaging and dry as well. There isn't much time for many descriptions and digressions. The writer is very matter-of-fact throughout the whole narrative, keeping focus on his story. And as a consequence, keeping his readers' eyes glued to the pages.

The main characters are beautifully developed little by little as the story progress. As such they are able to surprise the readers -- since we don't know everything about them. And they really surprise us! By the end of the book they have gone through the most shocking transformations -- so have the readers' sensibility. This is a classic novel that will last forever.

This book, more novella than novel, is intricately plotted and a very quick read. Wholly plot-driven, the book is a classic morality tale. A seductive woman, Phyllis Nirdlinger, desires to kill her wealthy husband. An otherwise intelligent insurance agent, Walter Huff, falls under her spell. Together they put together a seemingly failsafe plan to do the dastardly deed, making it appear as if it were an accident, so that the double indemnity clause in an insurance policy will kick into play. The problem is that all is not as it initially seems.

Written as a first person narrative by the insurance agent, the writing is tight, spare, and lean. No word is wasted. Yet, the minimalism works to the advantage of the story, as it makes the intricacy of the plotting clear to the reader. Having seen the film with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck in the lead roles, I kept hearing Fred MacMurray's voice in my head as I read the book. While the film deviates from the book in a number of ways, it is classic film noir at its best and well-worth viewing. Likewise, the book is a classic in its own right, and those who like hard-boiled crime fiction will not be disappointed.

I love most of James M. Cain's work like The Postman Always Rings Twice and Mildred Pierce. My favorite piece of work, though, is Double Indemnity. It's tough, real and it was based on an actual incident. The dialog is cynical, which is as it should be. The chraracters have no lllusions about one another. They have no illusions about life, either.
The lenght is just right for one of Cain's novels. I read it for the fourth time in a couple of hours and I will read it again. This is the perfect book for a rainy night. It's to be enjoyed with a glass of something strong, but not too strong. The story is already that.