Three Complete Novels: The Postman Always Rings Twice/ Double Indemnity/ Mildred Pierce - James M. Cain

Written by James M. Cain
Read by Stanley Tucci, James Naighton, Christine Williams
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

James Mallahan Cain was an American journalist and novelist. Although Cain himself vehemently opposed labeling, he is usually associated with the hardboiled school of American crime fiction and seen as one of the creators of the ‘roman noir’.

Although Cain spent many years in Hollywood working on screenplays, his name only appears on the credits of three films, ‘Algiers’, ‘Stand Up and Fight’, and ‘Gypsy Wildcat’.

He continued writing up to his death at the age of 85 in 1977. However, the many novels he published from the late 1940s onward never quite rivaled his earlier successes.

These are his three best. Two are really novellas, small but powerful.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) – Stanley Tucci
Publisher: HarperCollins
Edition: Unabridged
Release date: March 29, 2005
Duration: 02:50:22

Cain’s first novel - An amoral young tramp, a beautiful, sullen woman with an inconvenient husband. A problem that has only one, grisly solution — a solution that only creates other problems that no one can ever solve..

Moody, sexy, dark, and criminal, this noir classic takes on new life as Stanley Tucci embodies drifter Frank Chambers and the rest of the sordid cast of Cain’s famed novel. Cain’s terse, muscular prose and gift for dialogue spring off the page as Tucci effortlessly personifies Chambers’s narrative voice and amoral, if not immoral, life and times. Tucci chillingly, even blandly, communicates Chambers’s casually brutal passions and schemes as he cons his way through a tragedy cast in 1930s’ California. As one would expect, the story leads to a violent, degrading climax and not a few surprises.

Double Indemnity (1943) James Naughton

Publisher: HarperCollins
Release date: May 31, 2005
Duration: 03:17:19

A “simple” story of insurance fraud, and murder.

This is an excellent reading, Cain’s taut no-nonsense prose is skillfully mirrored by James Naughton’s delivery, which offers little in the way of showy effects. Like Cain, Naughton lets the facts of the case keep us riveted. His work is a reminder that an understated performance can be every bit as dramatic as a more energetic reading.

This novel is often on a “must read” list as one of the best of the genre.

Mildred Pierce (1941) - Christine Williams
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Release date: January 1, 2006
Duration: 10:00:51

Mildred Pierce had gorgeous legs, a way with a skillet, and a bone-deep core of toughness. She used those attributes to survive a divorce and poverty and to claw her way out of the lower middle class. But Mildred also had two weaknesses: a yen for shiftless men, and an unreasoning devotion to a monstrous daughter.

Out of these elements, Cain creates a novel of acute social observation and devastating emotional violence, with a heroine whose ambitions and sufferings are never less than recognizable.

It became a classic movie in the 1940’s and an HBO series in 2011.

The readers’ delivery is uneven. In places she is spot-on and flounders around in other
places.