Product Description

Tautly narrated and excruciatingly suspenseful, Double Indemnity gives us an X-ray view of guilt, of duplicity, and of the kind of obsessive, loveless love that devastates everything it touches. First published in 1935, this novel reaffirmed James M. Cain as a virtuoso of the roman noir.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #148824 in Books
• Published on: 1989-05-14
• Released on: 1989-05-14
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 8.00" h x .34" w x 5.18" l, .25 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

From Amazon.com
When smalltime insurance salesman Walter Huff meets seductive Phyllis Nirdlinger, the wife of one of his wealthy clients, it takes him only minutes to determine that she wants to get rid of her husband--and not much longer to decide to help her do it. Walter knows that accident insurance pays double indemnity on railroad mishaps, so he and Phyllis plot frantically to get Nirdlinger on--and off--a train without arousing the suspicions of the police, the insurance company, Nirdlinger's dishy daughter, her mysterious boyfriend, or Nirdlinger himself. This brief but complex novel is a perfect example of the ordinary-guy-gone-disastrously-wrong story that Cain always pulls off brilliantly.

From AudioFile
Do you love the 1944 film noir classic with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck? If so, pick up this excellent reading of James M. Cain's 1936 novel. 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. While the central aspect of the story, the insurance scam, is essentially the same as in the film, fans will enjoy comparing the many differences between this original novel and the movie. J.P.M. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

About the Author
James Mallahan Cain (1892 - 1977) was a first-rate writer of American hard-boiled crime fiction. Born in Baltimore, the son of the president of Washington College, Cain began his career as a reporter, serving in the American Expeditionary Force in World War I and writing for The Cross of Lorraine, the newspaper of the 79th Division. He returned from the war to embark on a literay career that included a professorship at St. John’s College in Annapolis and a stint at The New Yorker as managing editor before he went to Hollywood as a script writer. Cain’s famous first novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice, was published in 1934 when he was forty-two, and became an instant sensation. It was tried for obscenity in Boston and was said by Albert Camus to have inspired his own book, The Stranger. The infamous novel was staged in 1936, and filmed in 1946 and 1981. The story of a young hobo who has an affair with a married woman and plots with her to murder her husband and collect his insurance, The Postman Always Rings Twice is a benchmark of classic crime fiction and film noir. Two of Cain’s other novels, Mildred Pierce (1941) and Double Indemnity (1943), were also made into film noir classics. In 1974, James M. Cain was awarded the Grand Master Award by the Mystery Writers of America. Cain published eighteen books in all and was working on his autobiography at the time of his death.