James M. Cain cover gallery

(* The following brief introduction is an extract from one of the essays in Mean Streetmaps.)

If ever a book was filled with twisted hopes and crooked dreams, it is Double Indemnity. To James M. Cain, its author, it was a "piece of tripe," written to cash in on the startling success of his first novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice. Cain, nervously approaching his second full-length novel which he had in outline, was not finding his new career as a novelist easy. His agent, Edith Haggard, was flooded with requests for a new murder story by the best-selling author; Cain responded with articles about food, stories about failed actors who made their comeback on the back of a hippo and children’s birthday parties. He needed money: both RKO and Columbia had sniffed around the film rights to Postman when it was in galley form and still under Cain’s original title, Bar-B-Que, but Joe Breen, director of the Production Code Administration, had persuaded them it was a picture that was not going to be made. The finished book was sold to MGM for $25,000, but Breen wrote to Louis B. Meyer in March 1934 rejecting it as indecent, and citing then current objections from lawyers about their depiction on screen—Cain’s twisted lawyer Katz would have incensed them. MGM stalled on the project, which wouldn’t see the light of day for twelve years.
__The editor of Redwood magazine was one of Haggard’s most insistent clients when it came to Cain, and Cain finally submitted a short, 29,000-word novella. Redwood rejected it. With Serenade, his next full-length novel, still unfinished—Cain wanted to travel to Mexico to research the ending—he considered rewriting the novella, Double Indemnity, up to novel length, but before he could get started, Haggard sold it to Liberty magazine, who serialised it in early 1936, with sensational reader response. Not surprisingly, Hollywood snapped at this hot property, with five studios bidding for the rights. The price had reached $25,000 again when, once again, Joe Breen decided that the story would not fit the Production Code as it dealt ‘‘improperly with an illicit and adulterous sex relationship’’; it violated the Code in having the two killers escape from justice and in offering too much detail of the murder they had committed, which would lead to ‘‘the hardening of audiences, especially those who are young and impressionable, to the thoughts and facts of crime.”
__Any thought of putting the film on screen was put on hold for eight years. Cain himself thought Double Indemnity not worthy of putting into hardcover, although he softened, and it appeared with two other short novels in the collection Three of a Kind (Knopf, 1943), a best-seller following in the tracks of Serenade (1937) and Mildred Pierce (1941), the play based on Postman (first performed in 1936) and even a spell of screenwriting, albeit only briefly and not very notably.
__If Cain’s contribution to Hollywood as a scriptwriter was poor, he was a fine source of material; three moderately successful films had already been made from Cain’s stories: Wife, Husband and Friend, 1939, from the story ‘‘Two Can Sing’’; When Tomorrow Comes, 1939, from ‘‘The Modern Cinderella’’; and Money and the Woman, 1940, from the eponymous story; Postman had even been filmed, but in—and with the action transferred to—Italy by newcomer Luchino Visconti as Ossessione [Obsession] (1942). In America, it was 1944 before one of Cain’s smouldering, sleazy crime noirs finally made the big screen, and its twinning of sex and murder made it, not surprisingly, a smash hit.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (New York, Knopf, 1934; London, Cape, 1934)
Guild Books 1, (Feb) 1941, 6d.
Guild Books 233, (Aug) 1947, 96pp, 1/-.
Penguin Books 874, 1952, 122pp.
Panther Books 1004, Jan 1960, 124pp.
Pan Books 0330-26312-9, 1981, 124pp.
Orion Books 0752-86174-3, 2005.

Serenade (New York, Knopf, 1937; London, Cape, 1938)
Penguin Books 902, 1953, 206pp.
Corgi Books GN7284, 173pp.
Pan Books 0330-26341-2, 1981, 173pp.
Orion Books 0752-86175-1, 2005, 210pp.

Mildred Pierce (New York, Knopf, 1941; London, Hale, 1943)
Pocket Books, 1950, 323pp.
----, 1952, 323pp.
Ace Books H233, Nov 1958, 272pp, 3/6. Cover by unknown
Corgi Books FN7205, 1965, 286pp.
Hamlyn 0600-20439-1, 1982, 237pp.

Love's Lovely Counterfeit (New York, Knopf, 1942)
Robert Hale, c.1955, 2/-.
Corgi Books, 1966, 126pp.

Double Indemnity (New York, Avon, 1943)
Orion Books (Crime Masterworks 6) 978-075286427-3, 2005, vii+136pp, 2002.

Three of a Kind (Career in C Major, The Embezzler, Double Indemnity) (New York, Knopf, 1943; London, Hale, 1956)
abridged as Double Indemnity and The Embezzler. London, Pocket Books, 1950, 218pp.
as Double Indemnity. Corgi Books FN7206, 1965, 285pp.

Past All Dishonor (New York, Knopf, 1946)
Robert Hale, 1955, 2/-. Cover by McConnell?
Ace Books H470, Jun 1961, 2/6.
Digit Books R865, May 1964, 160pp, 2/6. Cover by Michel
Corgi Books GN7581, 1967, 124pp, 3/6.
Hamlyn 0600-20440-5, 1983, 126pp.

The Butterfly (New York, Avon, 1947)
Corgi Books, 1966, 70pp

Sinful Woman (New York, Avon, 1947)
(see Jealous Woman, below)

The Moth (New York, Knopf, 1948; London, Hale, 1950; abridged, New York, NAL, 1950)
Ace Books H209, Aug 1958, 192pp, 2/6. Cover by unknown
Tandem Books 33, 1965, 187pp.
Corgi Books 0552-07958-8, 1968, 286pp.

Jealous Woman (New York, Avon, 1950)
Ace Books H253, Mar 1959, 192pp, 2/6. Cover by John Vernon
[with Sinful Woman] Corgi Books GN7440, 1966, 190pp, 3/6. Cover: photo

The Root of His Evil (New York, Avon, 1951; London, Hale, 1954; as Shameless, New York, Avon, 1958)
Ace Books H296, Sep 1959, 192pp, 2/6. Cover by John Vernon
Corgi Books GN7518, 1966, 175pp, 3/6.

Galatea (New York, Knopf, 1953; London, Hale, 1954)
Ace Books H345, Apr 1960, 156pp, 2/6. Cover by unknown
Corgi Books GN7207, 1965, 158pp.
Magnum 041705840-3, 1981, 158pp.

Mignon (New York, Dial Press, 1962; London, Hale, 1963)
Corgi Books GN7002, 1964, 201pp. Cover by James Avati [US reprint]

The Magician's Wife (New York, Dial Press, 1965; London, Hale, 1966)
Corgi Books 0552-07850-6, 1968, 174pp, 3/6. Cover: photo.

Rainbow's End (Mason-Charter, 1975; London, W. H. Allen, 1975)
Magnum Books 0417-02020-1, 1977, 191pp.

The Institute (Mason-Charter, 1976; London, Hale, 1977)
Magnum Books 0417-01830-4, 1977.

The Baby in the Icebox and other short fiction, ed. Roy Hoopes (New York, Holt, 1981; London, Hale, 1982)
Penguin Books, 1984

Cloud Nine (New York, Mysterious Press, 1984; London, Hale, 1985)
(no UK paperback?)

The Enchanted Isle (New York, Mysterious Press, 1985)
(no UK paperback?)

Omnibus Editions
Cain Omnibus (The Postman Always Rings Twice, Serenade, Mildred Pierce) (Cleveland, World, 1946)
The Embezzler [and] Double Indemnity (Triangle Books, 1948)
Three of Hearts (Love's Lovely Counterfeit, The Butterfly, Past All Dishonour) (London, Hale, 1949)
Everybody Does It (Career in C Major, The Embezzler) (New York, NAL, 1949)
Jealous Woman [and] Sinful Woman (London, Hale, 1955)
Cain X 3 (The Postman Always Lives Twice, Mildred Pierce, Double Indemnity), intro. by Tom Wolfe (New York, Knopf, 1969)
Three Novels by James M. Cain (Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Serenade) (New York, Bantam, 1973)
Hard Cain (Sinful Woman, Jealous Woman, Root of His Evil), intro. by Harlan Ellison (Boston, G. K. Hall, 1980)
Four Complete Novels (The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce, Double Indemnity, Serenade) (New York, Avenel Books, 1982)
The Five Great Novels of James M. Cain (The Postman Always Rings Twice, Serenade, Mildred Pierce, Double Indemnity, The Butterfly) (London, Picador, 1985)
Three by Cain (Serenade, Love's Lovely Counterfeit, The Butterfly) (New York, McKay, 1989)
Three Complete Novels (The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce) (New York, Wings, 1994)

Non-fiction
Our Government (New York, Knopf, 1930; London, Allen & Unwin, 1930)
For Men Only: A Collection of Short Stories (as editor) (Cleveland, World, 1944)
60 Years of Journalism, ed. Roy Hoopes (Bowling Green, OH, Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1985)