(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)These three classics from the master of the noir novel, along with five otherwise unavailable short stories, are electric with the taut narrative voice, the suspense, and the explosive violence and eroticism that were James M. Cain's indelible hallmarks.The Postman Always Rings Twice, Cain's first novel-the subject of an obscenity trial in Boston, the inspiration for Camus's The Stranger-is the fever-pitched tale of a drifter who stumbles into a job, into an erotic obsession, and into a murder. Double Indemnity-which followed...

James M. Cain hammered high art out of the crude matter of betrayal, bloodshed, and perversity. These three novels, now published together in one volume, display him at the peak of his form.

This adventurous volume, with its companion devoted to the 1950s, presents a rich vein of modern American writing too often neglected in mainstream literary histories. Evolving out of the terse and violent hardboiled style of the pulp magazines, noir fiction expanded over the decades into a varied and innovative body of writing. Tapping deep roots in the American literary imagination, the novels in this volume explore themes of crime, guilt, deception, obsessive passion, murder, and the disintegrating psyche. With visionary and often subversive force they create a dark and violent mythology...

Seventeen gripping tales from one of the toughest authors in the history of crime fiction They call him Lucky-but he has never had a lucky day in his life. A nineteen-year-old hobo just starting to ride the rails, he is hiding in the coal car when the railroad detective comes through. They get into a scuffle, and Lucky's hand finds a railroad spike. Before he knows it, he has smashed the investigator's head and shoved him out of the car. If he hurries, if he's lucky, he will get back to Los Angeles in time to establish an alibi, burn his clothes, and avoid the electric chair. But as Lucky...