The Postman Always Rings Twice

James M. Cain...father to generations of hack noir writers. Perhaps I just hate the genre, the "hardboiled" style (yes, I really dislike Hammett too), but I really didn't like this book at all. I finished it yesterday morning before work and then took some time to try to figure out why The Postman Always Rings Twice book rang in toward the end of Modern Library's list of the top 100 20th C. novels. Apparently it made the list because this 1934 novel gave birth to the noir genre of the "hardboiled" style. Which is to say, it's a gritty, earthy, drama where the protagonist isn't a private eye, but rather a victim, perpetrator, or accomplice to a crime. Why this is a good thing, I'm still not sure.

Anyhoo, TPART is the story of a cagey drifter (yup, a new cardboard archetype), a "dame," and her decently well-off husband who she was never really in love with. Guess what? Surprise, surprise...the drifter and the dame fall in a bizarre kind of "love" and try to off the husband to get his money and collect on the insurance. Sound familiar? Yeah, because billions of hacks have been writing this crap ever since and it never gets any better in the re-telling. The drifter, Frank Chambers, can best be described as a cunning (but not smart), brutal thug with no redeeming qualities. Really...none. He's the main character and I kept hoping that bad things would happen to him. Crowbar to the crotch maybe. Something like that. If it's possible, Cora, the "dame," is even worse because she's brick-wall stupid to boot. Her husband, the Greek, is just boring. You don't like him, you don't dislike him, you just feel bad for him that these to yay-hoos are trying to kill him. So this short book has it all: murder, blackmail, domestic violence, car crashes, possible rape, lawyers, plot twists...everything except characters that you can remotely give two shits about. And that to me, along with giving future hacks 2 dimensional characters to work with, makes TPART a monument to suckitude.

I will say this for Cain, blessedly, the book was slim. He didn't waste words and the plot was fast-paced. Thank heaven for that, because I don't thing I could have spent 10 more minutes with that book. Easily the worst book on this list that I've read so far.