Following an accidental splurge at the weekend, my bookshelf is now more bulging than it was before. I picked up several things I'd been after for a while and the odd random punt, but at a mere two pounds a pop, it would have been rude not to. Or to put it another way, rent be damned, I'll pick up the pieces next month. Needing something short that I could burn through in a day or so before the next brick of a book lands in my lap, one of the new purchases fitted that bill perfectly, as well as dropping neatly into a category.
"A good, swift, violent story" is how Dashiell Hammett described The Postman Always Rings Twice and a pretty apt summary it is too. James M. Cain's thriller is terse, tense, quick and brutal. And dark, for this is noir. The prose is matches the tone – short and to the point. And the style very much suits the story.
The characters are all as you would expect – sharply sketched and immoral against a backdrop of a monochrome California. A brief, torrid love affair meets with an inevitable result, but it's the way it twists and turns throughout what is in essence a very simple plot that makes it so good. That and the interactions between the characters, the betrayal and double-crossings, both deliberate and inadvertent, that keep it interesting. It's not just the crime, it's the punishment too and it's the wrestling with the guilt and the aftermath, along with the comeuppance at the end which prevents it being a more mundane work. And it proved to be a one sitting job, lounging in the park in the sun and when it comes down to it, few things in life are better than that.
Book number: 54
Title: The Postman Always Rings Twice
Author: James M. Cain
Category: Crime
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