I really didn’t like James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, so this review is going to be a lot briefer than usual. Frank Chambers is a drifter who one day finds himself on the outskirts of Los Angeles. He wanders into the Twin Oaks Tavern, owned by Nick Papadakis, and takes a job. Intense attraction sparks between Frank and Nick’s wife, Cora, and they plot to kill Nick so they can be together, succeeding only on their second attempt. The police suspect them of wrongdoing and reveal that Nick had taken out a hefty life insurance plan after the first attempt on his life, and assume that the payout due was the pair’s motivation. In the clear after some knotty legal finagling, they decide to start their new life together but, c’mon, do you really expect a happy ending here?

“Then he came along. I took him, and so help me, I meant to stick by him. But I can’t stand it any more. God, do I look like a little white bird?”
“To me, you look more like a hell cat.”

The Postman Always Rings Twice is told in a sparse, dialogue driven prose with a quick and sharp rhythm. No time is wasted on motivation or detail, Frank’s desire and reasoning goes largely unexplained. The relationship between Frank and Cora lacks the passion to make their crimes seem convincing. If Cora was too delicate to hurt Nick’s feelings by leaving him, how does that morph into murderous intent? The pedestrian, dispassionate prose makes these characters difficult to comprehend. Where in The Maltese Falcon Hammett’s crime story was written in the stylish prose that defined the hardboiled genre, Cain’s lacks excitement, character or dense plot. Very disappointing.