Customer Reviews

The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, and Selected Stories (Everyman's Library Classics)

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Although Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler are better known today, James M. Cain (1892-1977) is at least their equal--and many consider that he bested both in his finest novels, which combined sin-blacked characters, sordid plots, terse prose, and all the power of a blast furnace. This anthology collects all three of his landmark novels as well as several short stories, all of them showing Cain at the height of his powers.

Published in 1934, THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE is the truly deadly story of a drifter who squirms his way into a job at a California truck stop--and then squirms his way into the bed of a sexy waitress. Trouble is, the waitress is married to the boss... and she doesn't like it, not one little bit. Dripping with lust, deception, and irony, POSTMAN is at once sickening and fascinating, a true powerhouse of a novel that festers long after the story has ended.

DOUBLE INDEMNITY, published in 1936, is equally hot--the tale of an insurance sales man who stays on the right side of the law until he is tempted by a psychopathic femme fatale who doesn't see anything wrong with picking up a few bucks on the unexpected death of her unwanted husband. MILDRED PIERCE, published in 1941, is equally memorable in its portrait of a driven housewife with a wayward husband who discovers that she will do absolutely anything for her vicious, serpentine daughter.

All three novels have been famously filmed, but while the film versions (most created during the 1940s) stand well on their own, the novels out distance them in nothing flat. Cora, begging Frank to bite her lips until they bleed; Phyllis with lipstick splashed across her mouth like a bleeding gash; sleek Monte and his viper-like stepdaughter Veda--all portraits of reckless abandon so powerful that they blister the page.

The volume also includes five hard-to-find Cain stories that are often as memorable as the best of his novels, most notably I think "The Baby in the Ice Box" and "Brush Fire." But whether it is novels or his shorter works, you simply can't go wrong when it comes to the best of James M. Cain. Welcome to the inferno. Brace yourself for the straight-down ride.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

James M Cain (1892 -1977) is best remembered for a series of novels he wrote while working as a screenwriter in Hollywood during the 1930s, including "The Postman Always Rings Twice", "Double Indemnity" and "Mildred Pierce". These novels were highly popular in their day and were made into several classic movies. Sometimes denigrated as "pulp" or even as "trash", these novels offer their own vision of American life and make a substantial contribution to American literature. The three novels, together with five rare Cain short stories, are available at a modest price in this hardback edition from Everyman's Library. The volume also includes an introductory essay on Cain by Robert Polito together with a chronology of Cain's life and work.

The novels are set in the Depression-era 1930s in southern California, including Los Angeles and its environs. There is feeling of place in each of these novels, particularly of cheap seedy businesses, impoverished dwellings, lonely roads and railroad tracks, poolhalls, and chop houses. The novels offer a stark view of human sexuality and lust and a dismal view of human nature as motivated by greed, jealousy, and class envy. Cain portrays a society that is philistine and always on the make. Women tend to be the stronger characters in Cain's novels. They take the initiative with their men, most often by usuing their sexuality but sometimes through ambition and effort as well. The men tend to be shiftless, unfocused and driven by their passions. Cain's writing is tough, descriptive, colloquial, and short.

The two short works in this collection, "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and "Double Indemnity" are stories of murder and violence. Both are told in a confessional style by a male narrator who is about to receive his end for his misdeeds. This style gives the books a strong sense of immediacy. "Postman" is set in suburban Los Angeles among the poor. Its primary character is a 24 year old grifter who becomes involved with the wife of a small owner of a restaurant and plots with her to kill him. The man is referred to by the characters as "The Greek" and their are overtones of prejudice throughout the work. The sexual character of the work was raw and overwhelming in its day, and it remains potent. The illicit affair is described in great detail with strong overtones of masochism on behalf of the woman. The novel details the murder plots, the streets of Los Angeles, and the criminal justice system of the day. It ends with an ironic but fated twist.

"Double Indemnity" also involves a scheme by a woman and her lover to murder the husband. In this case, the motive is more greed -- for the proceeds of an expensive insurance policy -- than lust. The narrator is an insurance salesman who becomes infatuated with the wife of an executive of an oil company. Thus, the story takes place among the middle and upper middle classes rather than among the poor; and, as was "Postman" it is narrated by the primary male character as a confessional before he meets his end. The leading female character in the book is sharply drawn and substantially more evil than her counterpart in "Postman." The book shows a good deal of internal development of its characters and works to a tense ending.

The third novel, "Mildred Pierce" is the longest and probably most substantial of the three. It has the same basic noir setting as the earlier works -- southern California in the 1930, but is much more psychologically probing than its companions. It does not involve a murder, but it shows even more than the shorter novels the darker aspects of human nature and the effects of lust and greed.

Cain's major character, Mildred Pierce, is a strongly and complexly drawn figure. She breaks with her philandering, ne'r do well husband and attempts to raise two young daughters on her own. She plays favorites between her two daughters. When the younger, less favored daughter tragically dies, Mildred redoubles her efforts towards the older girl, who Mildred believes, has great talent as a classical pianist. The girl, Vera, is ungrateful and spiteful from her youth, and much of the book involves the unravelling of the relationship between mother and daughter.

When she leaves her husband, Mildred has no apparent skills beyond the ability to bake pies. Yet Cain portrays her as a character of drive and ambition. Mildred is able to parlay a job she is forced to take as a waitress in a cheap restaurant, where she is groped and ogled, into a career as an entrepreneur. With this success, Mildred's story is ultimately a sad one as a result of her relationship with her daughter and her failed affairs with two unscrupulous and lustful men following her break with her husband. Cain offers a tough yet hard portrayal of a woman in a book which may grow with the reader.

I enjoyed reading these novels by Cain together with the stories which have qualities similar to the novels. This is a valuable book for those readers interested in noir or in American literature. I am attaching links to the individual titles of these works for further information and reviews for the interested reader.

The Postman Always Rings Twice
Double Indemnity
Mildred Pierce

Robin Friedman

If you haven't read James M Cain yet, you have to check him out.

This Everyman's Library edition is a great introduction. You get a lot of story in a tidy little hardback. Good paper, readable print, a volume that practically begs to be held and a nice wee ribbon for a bookmark. And the price is right, too.

Cain's prose is lean, tight and wickedly sharp. Like a back-alley razor-fight, you don't even feel the cut until after you see the blood. By then, it's too late.

Movies have been made of Cain's work. Quite a few, actually. He's stayed in print in Europe for the last fifty years. His work has cast a long shadow over many of our most popular noir authors today.

Way too good to miss.

I purchased this book on the strength of my love for the movies, and for once I can truthfully say the movies are better than the books. "Postman" is the best of the lot, but Mildred Pierce is the most interesting, if only for the fact that the gaggle of screen writers produced a Faberge out of a goose egg. The screenplay is structured very differently than the novel, which has a pedestrian (and seriously flawed) plot. The novel wants to focus on the title character's relationship with her daughter, but it's telling that the Horatio Alger story in the background is more interesting. I am in awe that a committee of writers could craft a masterpiece out of such indifferent material.

My advice: skip these books and re-rent the movies.

When my James M. Cain Everyman Edition of three of his novels and five short stories arrived this reviewer found himself in noir heaven! The handsome edition of some of Cain's best work includes five short stories and three of his superb novels.
They are:
The Postman Always Rings Twice-A bum named Frank falls off a hay truck and into the arms of Cora the waitress. Cora and Frank plan the murder of Nick, Cora's ignorant and ugly Greek husband. The two lovers then develop a loathing for one another. This gritty tale was filmed in 1946 starring John Garfield and the luscious Lana Turner. This is a short novella of only a little over 100 action packed pages. The book is narrated in the first person by Frank.
Double Indemnity-Walter is an insurance man who meets Phyllis. Phyllis and Walter plan to murder her husband collecting the insurance on a double indemnity policy. Walter turns against Phyllis when he learns of her murderous past but it is too late for the doomed pair. The book evokes the atmosphere of 1930s Los Angeles and is tautly written with great one liners. This book was also turned into a film classic starring Fred MacMurray as Walter, Barbara Stanwyck as the evil Phyllis and the deft directorial genius of Billy Wilder on display., A richer book than Postman. Both of these classics show us what happened when a weak man is entrapped by an evil and wily woman. Sex is dangerous in the world of Cain. The book is narrated by Walter.
Mildred Pierce-The longest of the three Cain novels was published in 1941. It concerns Mildred Pierce who begins at the bottom of the ladder as a waitress who climbs to riches as the owner of several California restaurants. Mildred is surrounded by men who are jerks; Burt, her former husband; Monty her lazy second husband and Wally a lawyer who is always hoping to score in the love department with the sexy Mildred. The book features one of the worst creatures in all of Americna Literature: VEDA! The greedy, grasping, egocentric and cruel oldest daughter of Mildred is a spoiled classical music singer with a love of stealing men from mom. Veda loves to put the hardworking Mildred down! The novel's ending is different and weaker than that of the 1945 film version which netted Joan Crawford her only Best Actress Oscar.
Cain has a delightful style and is easier to read than Chandler whose plots are so convoluted and hard to follow. Cain (1893-1977) was a Maryland born journalist; magazine editor and Hollywood script writer. His popularity will get a boost this year with the release of the HBO "Mildred Pierce" miniseries starring the fetching Kate Winslett.
The short stories are ironical especially "Brushfire" and the chilling "Baby in the Icebox."
Settle back and enjoy great reading.

James M. Cain and Erskine Caldwell were among the first authors to spark arousal in my early teens, some sixty years ago. Their provocative stories about adultery, lusty women, weak shiftless men, and sex were eagerly sought out and surreptitiously read, hidden from my mother's ever inquisitive eye. Cain was my particular favorite because he included mystery, criminal behavior, including murder, in his titillating stories. Caldwell's earthy stories of fun in the tobacco fields were lighter and more comical.

MILDRED PIERCE, one of the many Cain works I read as a youngster, was not a favorite at the time, probably because it didn't move fast enough for my young hormones. A current reading has changed all that and I find the story tremendously entertaining and well written. Not only is it enjoyable, but Cain's excellent writing skills are on full display. The plot, on its face, seems to be a snoozer. A single mother raises two girls, loses one to an illness and overcompensates for the loss by overly indulging the other, a duplicitous girl who can't behave herself. Mom, with a talent for cooking and baking, extracts herself from financial hardship by developing a successful restaurant business that eventually devours itself with the help of her weaknesses. Cain spiced it up by threading his usual accounts of lusty behavior, scoundrels, sense of place, and dishonesty into that seemingly mundane landscape and produced a page-turner that captivates the reader with its tension.

Cain's writing is terse and grammatically precise. The dialogue is clear and convincing, and the plot is credible. Some critics have complained that the viperous daughter's sudden evolution into an operatic singing phenomenon is not realistic and that Cain was too formulaic in his overall writing techniques. I find, however, that Cain didn't belabor the singing prowess and merely used the event as a tool to keep the story moving, a novelist's privilege. His writing is what it is, commercial but eminently successful in its ability to entertain his readers.

I appreciate well constructed books almost as much as what's inside. I read MILDRED PIERCE from the Everyman's Library 2003 Edition, published by Alfred A Knopf, a division of Random House. This is a gorgeous little book featuring crisp typography, fine paper, tight colorful binding, attractive dust cover, and an attached gold ribbon page marker. Along with MILDRED PIERCE, the edition includes novels THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE and DOUBLE INDEMNITY, along with five excellent Cain short stories. The reader will have the opportunity to enjoy Cain's writing for the first time or as a reread, and it a book you won't want to donate when you have completed it.

James M. Cain and Erskine Caldwell were among the first authors to spark arousal in my early teens, some sixty years ago. Their provocative stories about adultery, lusty women, weak shiftless men, and sex were eagerly sought out and surreptitiously read, hidden from my mother's ever inquisitive eye. Cain was my particular favorite because he included mystery and criminal behavior, including murder, in his titillating stories. Caldwell's earthy tales of fun in the tobacco fields were lighter and more comical.

MILDRED PIERCE, one of the many Cain works I read as a youngster, was not a favorite at the time, probably because it didn't move fast enough for my young hormones. A current reading has changed all that and I find the story tremendously entertaining and well written. Not only is it enjoyable, but Cain's excellent writing skills are on full display. The plot, on its face, seems to be a snoozer. A single mother raises two girls, loses one to an illness and overcompensates for the loss by overly indulging the other, a duplicitous girl who can't behave herself. Mom, with a talent for cooking and baking, extracts herself from financial hardship by developing a successful restaurant business that eventually devours itself with the help of her weaknesses. Cain spiced it up by threading his usual accounts of lusty behavior, scoundrels, sense of place, and dishonesty into that seemingly mundane landscape and created a page-turner that captivates the reader with its tension.

Cain's writing is terse and grammatically precise. The dialogue is clear and convincing, and the plot is credible. Some critics have complained that the viperous daughter's sudden evolution into an operatic singing phenomenon is not realistic and that Cain was too formulaic in his overall writing techniques. I find, however, that Cain didn't belabor the singing prowess and merely used the event as a tool to keep the story moving, a novelist's privilege. His writing is what it is, commercial but eminently successful in its ability to entertain his readers.

I appreciate well constructed books almost as much as what's inside. I read MILDRED PIERCE from the Everyman's Library 2003 Edition, published by Alfred A Knopf, a division of Random House. This is a gorgeous little book featuring crisp typography, fine paper, tight colorful binding, attractive dust cover, and an attached gold ribbon page marker. Along with MILDRED PIERCE, the edition includes novels THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE and DOUBLE INDEMNITY, along with five excellent Cain short stories. The reader will have the opportunity to enjoy Cain's writing for the first time or as a reread, and it a book you won't want to donate when you have completed it.

James Cain is fun to read. The collection of stories was good and the book was in excellent condition.

Wanted to read "Mildred Pierce" in preparation for the HBO Miniseries starring Kate Winslet. A different story than the movie, but still riveting. Cain knows how to develop characters, and weave a suspenseful story. Mildred is a workaholic who somehow loses track with the ongoings of her daughter, Veda. This all plays out to a startling outcome at the very end of the novel. Personaly, I prefer the movie's plot, but that does not deter from the book's plot.

I have yet to read the other stories in the book, but am anxiously awaiting to do so. Don't forget to watch the HBO Miniseries which begins March 27, 2011.

The seedy underbelly of Los Angeles is a backdrop many crime novelists- both great and long forgotten- have used to add instant flavor to their work. Nothing entices a reader, especially those only familiar with the glitz and glitter of Los Angeles as the Home to the Stars, then having an author pull back the curtain, or in this case, lift up the rug, and show you the dirt and grime underneath. So prepare to wash your hands when you are done with this classic because this 100 page shot to the gut may well stain the fingers with its abundance of Southern California filth. The narrator is a drifter one step ahead of the law. His personal femme fatale is a married woman dying to off the immigrant husband she married simply to escape smalltown America. Their nefarious plans are anything but full proof, their romance is a cauldron of violence and loathing, and the twists and turns author James Cain takes us on rival those of LA's deadly Mulholland Drive, a lonesome stretch of highway not unlike the road that plays a central part in the novel's climax. Hopeless, pathetic, yet undeniably full of life, the characters and environment created in this novel will linger with you a long time after the book is set down.

And just for the record, the slightly unsettling title appears nowhere in the book.