This novel surprised me with how good it turned out to be. The edition of the novel I read breezes through its mere 120 pages. I honestly only picked this book up because it was on the Modern Library’s List of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century and I also wanted a short read that I could finish in a single day. ”James M. Cain is recognized today as one of the masters of the hard-boiled school of American novels,” so declares the biography included in my edition. The novel exemplifies what I would identify as the primary qualities of hard-boiled fiction: 1) it employs a practical, almost simple prose style in stark contrast with the florid and overly descriptive style that many other writers use. 2) it has a very distinct first-person voice that never slips into stream-of-conscious disjointedness, but exudes a tough superficial worldliness. 3) has an unsentimental attitude about sex and violence. This last quality matters in this novel in particular because it allows us to remain aloof from the horrible crimes the two protagonists commit.

A young drifter named Frank Chambers comes across a small roadside eatery finds himself offered a job by the owner, Nick Papadakis, known as the Greek (due to his ethnic origin). He takes the job with eyes for Nick’s beautiful young American wife, Cora, who does the cooking. Eventually they start up an affair behind Nick’s back who remains oblivious. Cora and Nick plot to kill Nick so they can engage in their love affair uninterrupted. The first time they try to kill him in the bathtub, but botch the job when a cat jumps on a circuit breaker and knocks out the power (and the lights).

After Nick survives this incident, Frank and Cora leave for the road together, but Cora changes her mind due to fears over having no money. Frank eventually returns, after trying to make money from pool and losing it, and is rehired by Nick at his diner. With some initial reservations, Cora and Nick resurrect their affair. They also plot to kill Nick again. This time they are successful, developing an elaborate plot that involves getting Nick and Frank drunk, and pushing the car over a cliff while on their way to Malibu and pretending it was an accident. The crime turns out to be too perfect and the district attorney threatens to charge both of them with the murder. His strategy is to use their fear against them to turn them against each other. It works, but the lawyers they hire to defend them has a better strategy and gets them off scott free. However, their relationship is poisoned by this betrayal and they no longer trust each other.  After long tribulations that involve Frank getting into another affair and almost murdering Cora because she threatens to tell the truth about the murder, they finally forgive and trust each other, but Cora accidentally dies from complications from her pregnancy with Frank’s child and a car accident. Due to the fact that the first murder they got away with involved a car accident, this time the same district attorney nails Frank for the crime and its end with him on death row contemplating the events.

This ending of course proves ironic given the fact that he is convicted of a crime that was actually an accidental death and gets off from a crime where he actually committed murder. For all its unsentimental approach to violence and sex, there is that justice ultimately prevails, even if a lot of injustice needs to happen first. However, even as the style makes it hard to completely loathe Frank and Cora (despite them being clearly bad people), I still found myself feeling sorry for poor Nick Papadakis whose crime amount to nothing more than helping and trusting the wrong people.

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