Cain, James M

New York. 1981. Holt Rinehart Winston. 1st Trade Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket W/Wrinkled Front Flap. 0030585015. 312 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration & design by Irving Freeman. keywords: Mystery America . FROM THE PUBLISHER - This is the first book to collect the best of his shorter work - selected short stories and sketches together with one of his finest serials, the novella published at different times under the titles ‘Money and the Woman' and ‘The Embezzler.' As taut and brilliant in its way as Cain's most famous serial, Double Indemnity, this ingenious example of Cain's ‘love rack' fiction has been out of print for many years, but reads as immediately today as when first written more than three decades ago. Equally fascinating, especially when seen within Roy Hoopes's tracings of the development of Cain's work, are the entertaining sketches and dialogues Cain originally wrote for journalistic publication - beautiful models of efficiency and concision stamped with Cain's characteristic irony. We are given ten of his best, out of hundreds he wrote for the New York World and H.L. Mencken's American Mercury. Together with nine of his finest short stories - including those three Cain classics, ‘Pastorale,' ‘The Baby in the Icebox,' and ‘Dead Man' - this volume comprises both an ideal introduction to the work of this remarkable American author and a mandatory book for all James M. Cain fans. Roy Hoopes is an accomplished journalist and editor who has published hundreds of articles and half a dozen books - most recently the widely acclaimed Americans Remember the Home Front, a civilian documentary of World War II. He came to know James M. Cain in the last years of the writer's life, and is completing the first full biography of Cain, with access to all estate papers including drafts of Cain's own unfinished memoirs. That book, titled CAIN, will be published by Holt in 1982. inventory #8352 ISBN: 0030585015.