Bøger af James M. Cain

'Nobody has ever quite pulled it off the way Cain does, not Hemingway, and not even Raymond Chandler' Tom Wolfe'A sensational achievement' News Chronicle

'Cain was not just a great hard-boiled novelist but a great novelist, period ... To read MILDRED PIERCE now is to experience a double vision, in which we confront both how much and how little things have changed' LA TIMES

A true crime masterpiece, and highly acclaimed 1940s movie'DOUBLE INDEMNITY is among the finest of all American novels, regardless of genre or style' LA TIMES

"When Frank, an amoral young drifter, gets thrown off a hay truck in the California desert, he ends up at a diner run by Cora and her inconvenient husband, Nick. This chance meeting puts them all on a sure path to perdition. First published in 1934 and banned in Boston for its explosive mixture of violence and eroticism, The Postman Always Rings Twice is a classic of the roman noir. It established James M. Cain as a major novelist with an unsparing vision of America's bleak underside and was acknowledged by Albert Camus as the model for The Stranger." -- provided by publisher.

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.First published in 1934 and banned in Boston for its explosive mixture of violence and eroticism, The Postman Always Rings Twice is a classic of the roman noir. It established James M. Cain as a major novelist with an unsparing vision of America's bleak underside, and was acknowledged by Albert Camus as the model for The Stranger.

James M. Cain, virtuoso of the roman noir, gives us a tautly narrated and excruciatingly suspenseful story in Double Indemnity, an X-ray view of guilt, of duplicity, and of the kind of obsessive, loveless love that devastates everything it touches. Walter Huff was an insurance salesman with an unfailing instinct for clients who might be in trouble, and his instinct led him to Phyllis Nirdlinger. Phyllis wanted to buy an accident policy on her husband. Then she wanted her husband to have an accident. Walter wanted Phyllis. To get her, he would arrange the perfect murder and betray everything he had ever lived for.

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 Postman so quickly, Cain's readers hardly had a chance to catch their breath-is a tersely narrated story of blind passion, duplicity, and, of course, murder. Mildred Pierce, a work of acute psychological observation and devastating emotional violence, is the tale of a woman with a taste for shiftless men and an unreasoned devotion to her monstrous daughter. All three novels were immortalized in classic Hollywood films. Also included here are five masterful stories-"Pastorale," "The Baby in the Icebox," "Dead Man," "Brush Fire," "The Girl in the Storm"-that have been out of print for decades.

Seventeen hardboiled crime stories from the "poet of the tabloid murder" and author of Double Indemnity (Edmund Wilson). 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 will discover, the deadliest threat is lurking within his own mind. "Dead Man" is just one of the outstanding stories included in this volume. The author of some of the most hard-boiled prose ever written, James M. Cain understood fear in all its forms-and knew better than anyone the terror of a killer on the run.

Following her husband's death, beautiful young widow Joan Medford is forced to take a job serving drinks in a cocktail lounge to make ends meet. At the job she encounters two men who take an interest in her, a handsome schemer and a wealthy but unwell older man who rewards her for her attentions with a $50,000 tip and an offer of marriage...

'Cain has established a formidable reputation of furious pace, harsh and masterful realism, tough, raw speech right out of the mouths of the people' SATURDAY REVIEW

Walter Neff er forsikringsagent med rent mel i posen indtil han ved et salgsbesøg støder ind i den forførende Phyllis - femme fatale og i øvrigt gift med den mand, han forsøger at sælge en forsikring.Som hemmelige elskere indleder de to et rænkespil af dimensioner, hvor de vil myrde manden og indkassere hans livsforsikring. Det skal ligne en ulykke, og gerne en togulykke, for i så fald får man dobbelt dækning.Dobbelt dækning er James M. Cains krimi-klassiker fra 1936, der som et katalog i amoral viser, hvor kynisk mennesker kan opføre sig, når det handler om at tilfredsstille trangen til lyst og penge. Romanen er filmatiseret i den berømte opførelse Kvinden uden samvittighed fra 1944 af Billy Wilder med filmdivaen Barbara Stanwyck i hovedrollerne. Den blev nomineret til syv Oscars og har opnået kultstatus som noir-film.