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Rating: 
Summary: As intense and exciting as any crime novel I've read
Review: Despite only taking a few hours to complete, this was as intense and exciting as any crime novel I've read. James M. Cain manages to squeeze a whole novel's worth of characters, plot twists, and emotions into only 116 pages. Like Ernest Hemingway, Cain employs a minimalistic writing style to fashion uneducated, "simple" characters with complex emotional undercurrents. He knows when to understate a scene and when to use vivid, erotic images to shock his readers. His pacing is nearly flawless, except for one awkward scene with the briefly-mentioned Madge Allen character. And the conclusion, while somewhat of a cliche, is typical of the best 1930's roman noir fiction. The only reason I gave this book 3 stars instead of 4 is that I wish Cain had added more dialogue and development scenes at the beginning to show how Frank and Cora fell in love and fed off each other's neuroses.
Rating: 
Summary: Despair and degradation as art
Review: This is a book you read once and can't stop thinking about. It's what I call a 'blue book', one that is soulful and strangely mellow. It actually makes me feel like I'm underneath a very shady tree on a sunny day. Reason being that the light is very blue green, so a 'blue' book. Before I try to make sense of this, let's continue. Frank Chambers is a young drifter who rolls into town, goes to work in a diner for Nick, a tough Greek, falls for Nick's young wife Cora, then decides, with Cora's help, to murder Nick and take over the restaurant. What should be simple becomes more complex. The first murder attempt fails, the second one is successful but easy to see through. With the help of a very smart and very crooked lawyer, both Frank and Cora are soon free. That, really, is where the problems start. Frank and Cora love and hate each other fiercely, speaking with remarkably accurate, real dialogue. Cain doesn't even attribute his dialogue, so pay close attention to who's speaking. The book is mostly just people talking, in very real language, full of slang and fragmented sentences. It's like listening to a REALLY interesting conversation. Frank and Cora are two very small, unremarkable, inconsequential people caught up in something too big for them to understand. They mistake happiness and hope for lust, hate, anger and even apathy. And just when things look alright, one little, honest accident washes it all away. This book shows us how fragile everything is, or at least how fragile it can be. That's what elevates this to the level of tragedy. This is something to live with and dwell upon, something you can never quite shake off, no matter how hard you try. (...)
Rating:
Summary: Another Favorite By James M. Cain
Review: This novel was another stunner from Cain. Set out in a then country area of California, outside of LA in the early 1940s, most of the action takes place at a diner on the main highway. This too involves a wife very unhappy with her husband, Cora with Nick. She finds a possible way out of her life with this brutish husband when drifter Frank comes into the diner and hangs around doing odd jobs for them. The couple plot to kill Nick so that they can end up with the diner and each other. There was one movie version done by John Garfield and Lana Turner in the 1940s that was absolutely faithful to the book. There was a 2nd version in the 1980s with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange that deviated somewhat from the novel, especially towards the end. I enjoyed both film versions equally and would highly recommend them. A Cain novel is very hard to put down once you've started and the man used no excess words. He too was an expert at looking at the best and worst of people as brought out by crime and its punishment.
Rating:
Summary: Full of Despair
Review: This slim novel was first publishedin 1934, it felt timeless to me and was finished in one sitting without pause. The lead characters Frank and Cora are bleak and cold, totally lacking in redeeming qualities. What makes the book so gripping to me is that the style of the writing, the sparse use of words and it's coldness exactly matches them. The content is not suitable for young children and at one time Cain faced prosecution for this publication. Today as the world has changed Postman would not have had the same impact in those terms, but as a literary work I think it is still stunning. The plot is the murder of a small time diner owner by his wife and her drifter lover who comes to work for them and the destruction of what affection they had for each other through their own amoral natures. Excellent!
Rating:
Summary: Solid example of noir suspense
Review: Though I rate this book at four stars, make no mistake about it, this is a fine book. Tightly written and carrying no tedious padding, this is a perfect weekend book. Cain describes the settings and physical descriptions of the people with exquisite flair, and his dialogue is wondrous to read. While I praise the brevity of the novel, it's low word-count is the only reason I did not award "The Postman" five stars. I feel a five-star book should not be something that can be read so quickly. From the opening paragraph, I was hooked. Cain wastes no time introducing his characters and setting the table for a raucous reading experience. When the story came to an end, I knew I had discovered a master craftsman, for his book left me with that most elusive of reading experiences: I wanted more, a lot more, but I knew the story ended where it had to. Great stuff! I can't believe this was his first published novel. I'm definitely going to hunt down more of his work.
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