| Title | : | Double Indemnity |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0679723226 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780679723226 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 115 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1936 |
Walter Huff was an insurance salesman with an unfailing instinct for clients who might be in trouble, and his instinct led him to Phyllis Nirdlinger. Phyllis wanted to buy an accident policy on her husband. Then she wanted her husband to have an accident. Walter wanted Phyllis. To get her, he would arrange the perfect murder and betray everything he had ever lived for.
Double Indemnity Reviews
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Double indemnity , James Mallahan Cain
Double Indemnity is a 1943 crime novel, written by American journalist-turned-novelist James M. Cain.
Walter Huff, an insurance agent, falls for the married Phyllis Nirdlinger, who consults him about accident insurance for her unsuspecting husband. In spite of his instinctual decency, and intrigued by the challenge of committing the perfect murder, Walter is seduced into helping the femme fatale kill her husband for the insurance money. After killing him in the Nirdlinger car, they stage an accident from the rear platform of a train. But they cannot enjoy their success.
The crime backfires on them, and soon afterwards, with the insurance company's claim manager Barton Keyes becoming more and more suspicious of them, he decides to kill her, too "for what she knew about me, and because the world isn't big enough for two people once they've got something like that on each other". With her own distrust mounting, Phyllis also decides to kill her accomplice. One night, he tries to ambush her, but she forestalls him and shoots at him, instead. He survives, though, and the end sees both of them on a steamship heading to Mexico: Keyes has given them an ostensible chance to escape formal justice by booking their passages - without them knowing about the other.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و نهم ماه سپتامبر سال2013میلادی
عنوان: غرامت مضاعف؛ اثر: جیمز ام کین؛ مترجم: بهرنگ رجبی؛ تهران، نشر چشمه، سال1390، در151ص، شابک9786002290250؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا سده20م
عنوان: غرامت مضاعف؛ اثر: جیمز ام کین؛ مترجم: نیکا خمسی؛ تهران، علمی فرهنگی؛ سال1397؛ در108ص؛ شابک9786004366724؛
رمان عاشقانه جنایی «غرامت مضاعف»، اثر «جیمز ام کین» ستایشگران بسیاری داشته است، جناب «بهرنگ رجبی» مترجم کتاب، در مقدمه ی رمان، نویسنده را آغازگر رمان نوآر «امریکایی» دانسته اند، و نوشته اند: («دشیل همت»، «ریموند چندلر»، «دیوید گودیس»، «جیم تامپسون»، و «جیم الروی»، و همه استادان جنایی‌نویسی پس از ایشان، بی‌شک وام‌دار راهی هستند، که ایشان باز کرد و پیمود)؛
رمان پلیسی «پستچی همیشه دوبار زنگ می‌زند» از همین نویسنده نیز، بسیار خواندنی است؛ گویا در همان مقدمه بود خواندم، که «تام ولف» روزنامه نگار و نویسنده «آمریکایی»، گفته اند: (هر کس می‌خواهد داستان‌نویسی یاد بگیرد، برود رمان‌های «جیمز ام کین»را بخواند)»؛
چکیده: داستان از مواجهه ی یک مامور بیمه، با همسر یکی از مشتریان، آغاز می‌شود، آنها سعی دارند، نقشه ی قتل مرد بیمه گذار را اجرایی کنند؛ «فیلیس دیتریکسن» زنی است مکار، فاسد و پول‌پرست، که به گونه ی پیشامدی با «والتر هاف»، فروشنده ی بیمه ی شرکت «پاسیفیک»، آشنا می‌شود؛ «والتر» برای افزایش زمان قرارداد بیمه ی خودروی سواری آقای «دیتریکسن»، به منزل آنها آمده است، اما داستان جور دیگری به پیش می‌رود؛ «دیتریکسن» در خانه نیست، و «والتر» خود را با «فیلیس» رودررو می‌بیند؛ به او دل می‌بندند، و «فیلیس» هم با اندیشه ی کشتن شوهر خود، «والتر» عقل باخته و دل‌باخته را، ابزار دست خویش می‌کند، «والتر هاف» نقشه ی ماهرانه ای برای کشتن شوهر «فیلیس» میچیند، و برای سرکیسه کردن شرکت بیمه، که خود از همه ی ریزه کاری‌ها و پژوهشها، و چگونگی اثبات ادعای خسارت، آگاهی دارد، به «فیلیس» پیشنهاد می‌کند؛ «دیتریکسن» باید در سانحه ی قطار بمیرد، تا «فیلیس» تاوان دوچندان دریافت کند؛ و...؛
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 17/02/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ 10/12/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی -
Double as good!
BOOK TO FILM
I watched the film adaptation of Double Indemnity and I loved it!
I think that the look of the actress Barbara Stanwyck is the very definition of a femme fatale. I am aware of other great examples like Rita Hayworth in Gilda, Lana Turner in The Postman always rings twice or Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep to name a few, but when the term of “femme fatale” comes to mind, the image of Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity is my first thought.
When I watched for the first time the movie, it was shocking to see Fred MacMurray in this kind of movie, he did it masterfully, but my previous experience with him in acting was pretty much with his work on Disney-related films like The Shaggy Dog and The Absent-Minded Professor, so imagine my shock watching him in such dark role.
I think that it was odd that Raymond Chandler was the selected one to co-work on the script adaptation for this novel written by James M. Cain. The film adaptation was well done, but the story is pretty much the same, with some minor exceptions like changing the last names of the main characters, so I don’t see why not to hire James M. Cain to adapt his own work.
GREED MEETS LUST
Double Indemnity is a quick reading and quite entertaining.
Walter Huff, an Insurance Agent, really good at his job, meets a married woman, Phyillis Nirdlingler, and they plot to kill her husband for getting the juicy payment of a double indemnity insurance policy. Keyes, an agent in the Insurance Company in charge of checking any foul play in the collection of insurances' payments will be a real hound to be sure that everything sounds okay in the case.
Maybe my only complain about the story is that Huff is too fast convinced to be involved in the murder plot. Yes, Phyllis is described like a sexy lady, but I think that only lust isn’t enough motivation for a character like Walter Huff to agree so quick.
When the story evolves, you will know that this isn’t the “first rodeo” of Phyllis, so it’s quite believable that she would be thinking about a way to break off from her husband but with getting a big amount of money for her own in the process.
However, Walter is described as hard-working, with many years in the insurance business, there isn’t any evidence that he had been a ladies’ man in the past, or even having debts for any reason. Also, Walter isn’t a fresh young boy, but a mature man, where if he didn’t do anything illegal before, it’s quite odd to start to do felonies then. So, okay, I admit that we, men, don’t think well when a sexy woman is around, but one thing is to do some small foolishness to impress a lady and quite another to commit a crime, not only an insurance fraud but also a murder!
The novel is based on a real life incident, so yes, we, men, are such stupid. I am not saying that we aren’t able to do such kind of things, only I comment that the character of Walter Huff, in the novel, lacks of a some convincing reason to agree so dang fast to get deep in misdeed.
Another factor that I enjoyed about the book is that while it's clearly a noir story, instead of having a private detective as the main character, the story doesn't have any private detective at all (Sure, Keyes does many investigative work in his position in the Insurance Company, but he's not a private detective) and also, the story is told from the point of view of the culprit ones.
Double Indemnity is a smart story, with an engaging narrative, showing the dark side of human nature and how a couple can coldy design, step-by-step, the perfect way to murder a person in order to get money, and how the chaos of real life is ruthless with everybody, good or bad. -
What is it with this James Cain? First, I tried reading
The Postman Always Rings Twice to prepare for my civil service exam, but it was all about murder and didn’t have anything at all about postal regulations. Then I read Double Indemnity to try and become an insurance agent and once again, it’s nothing but a guy getting busy with another man's wife and then plotting to kill him.
At least this one actually had some stuff about the insurance industry, and I did learn a bit about fraud. Still, it was mostly about murder. This Cain must have had a lot of problems. Or maybe these books shouldn’t have been shelved with the study guides at the library? -
The novel begins with first person narrator Walter Huff reflecting back on the sequence of events that started when he remembered a renewal over in Hollywoodland. We read: "That was how I came to this House of Death, that you've been reading about in the papers. It didn't look like a House of Death when I saw it. It was just a Spanish house, like all the rest of them in California." This sense of foreboding hangs over each and every sentence. Alert: my review contains what could be considered spoilers.
Turns out Walter Huff is an insurance salesman who wants to beat the insurance Industry at its own game. Walter sees the whole world of insurance as a roulette wheel, and since he can see its inner workings from behind the scene, he wants to play the wheel and cash in. However, Walter needs a partner, that is, an outside plant, a customer willing to join him in playing the game, in placing a bet, in putting the chips down in a gamble to commit a murder that will look like suicide so he and his partner can collect big time, double indemnity, on the life insurance policy.
Walter finds his plant in Phyllis who lives with her husband and stepdaughter in that Spanish house in Hollywoodland, a house looking like all the others . But what a plant! Little does Walter know Phyllis is a flesh and blood embodiment of the goddess of death - the energy of the universe that's fierce, dark and chaotic, the energy of the universe that is your worst nightmare. Phyllis is more than happy to join Walter in killing her husband to collect the money. Of course, for Phyllis, killing her husband is much, much more than just murder and collecting from the insurance company. Phyllis loves the killing.
The writing is tight, compressed and filled to the verbal brim with tension. Here is an example of Walter Huff's reflection: "There's nothing so dark as a railroad track in the middle of the night. The train shot ahead, and I crouched there, waiting for the tingle to leave my feet. I had dropped off the left side of the train, into the footpath between the tracks, so there wouldn't be any chance I could be seen from the highway." Hard-boiled noir, anyone?
With Cain we have clear-cut, penetrating character descriptions. Here is Huff describing one of the men he must deal with at his insurance company: "Keyes is head of the Claims Department, a holdover from the old regime, and the way he tells it young Norton (the company president) never does anything right. He's big and fat and peevish, and on top of that he's a theorist, and it makes your head ache to be around him, but he's the best claims man on the Coast, and he was the one I was afraid of."
The end of the novel has Phyllis covering her face in chalk white with black circles under her eyes and with red on her lips and cheeks, rapped in a hideous red silk scarf, all ready to jump to her death from the ship she's traveling on into the ocean, to jump at night and be torn apart by sharks under a full moon. Walter, who is also on the ship, tells Phyllis he himself will join her in jumping from the ship under a full moon to be torn apart by sharks. Walter finally understands this is what happens when you have evil intentions and ask the goddess of death to be your partner in crime. Double Indemnity is James M. Cain's unforgettable, one-of-a-kind classic.
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Just as good as everyone always says it is.
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Ooh la la...the femme fatale...
Intelligent, gorgeous, self-assured and drenched in enough sexual allure to stop a heart at 50 paces. These cold, calculating foxes are nature's consummate predators, guaranteed to ensnare any man by his short and curlies faster and tighter than a rusty zipper. In fact, the only adversary more likely to separate a man from his giblets is the femme bot toting high caliber machine-gun jubblies.
Well, Double Indemnity has one of the most memorable of these vile, vexing vixens and central character Walter Huff is played like a string quartet by this virtuoso of diabolicalness. Walter’s an insurance salesman who finds himself involved in a plot with a rich man’s wife to ice hubby and collect on the life insurance. The title comes from the 2X payout for accidental death caused by a train.
All aboard...
At the risk of sounding oxymoronical, Walter comes across as a decent bloke provided you discount the positively reprehensible actions in which he finds himself a willing and active participant. Unfortunately, and despite being crafty and very intelligent in his own right, Walter’s in way over his hairline and is eggs and buttered toast minus the butter and eggs from the opening act. However, his lack of a moral compass and unwillingness to second guess his actions makes him less than sympathetic.
As far as the pacing, taut and gripping doesn’t begin to describe the breakneck** speed of this masterful tale. At a scant 128 pages, this story is sleek, fast and corners like it's on rails, glueing you to your seat from the get go. Cain’s sparse, detached prose is quintessential noir and he stays in complete command of his verse as he deftly navigates the plot.But all of a sudden, she looked at me, and I felt a chill creep straight up my back and into the roots of my hair. "Do you handle accident insurance?"
Speaking of the plot, that is where this story really knocks it out of the park. It is pitch perfect. As detailed, intricate and well-crafted a plot as I have witnessed in my time with crime fiction and I was awed by how on cue every element of the story was.
**A most unintended pun.
My one and only gripe in this otherwise mouth-watering bowl of yummy....not enough emotional wreckage. Call it sick and twisted, but one of the dark, guilty pleasures of a good piece of noiry nastiness is when the dumb-lug-with-a-heart-of-gold-and-brains-of-formica realizes he’s been washed, pressed and folded by the Kathleen Turner/Sharon Stone/Lauren Becall-esque villainess. Well, because of Walter’s own ethical deficiencies, the pay off is not as sadistically satisfying as it would have been if Walter had been truly worthy of sympathy. He just had a little too much scum in his bag to truly garner much sympathy.
Don’t get me wrong, Walter’s character is superbly drawn and he brings an interesting emotional dynamic to the story, I just wasn’t as emotionally invested in him as I’ve been with other lead characters that had a better allotment of decency to be twisted by the powers of evil.
Still, this is just about as good as it gets for noir crime fiction and this is oh so rightfully considered one of the pillars of the genre.
5.0 stars. HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION!!
P.S. Now I'm off to watch the movie which, sad as it sounds, I have never seen. -
It's obvious that James M. Cain was a man who didn't believe in foreplay.
Foreplay? Nah. The broads don't need any of that aggravation.
Just open the door, introduce yourself, maybe buy the dame a drink, then BAM!
Under those blue pajamas was a shape to set a man nuts.
Set a man nuts, and kill her husband, too.
Sure, why not?
Bada bing, bada boom!
But, wait! Turns out the job was sloppy and the doll's a wench.
That's all it takes, one drop of fear, to curdle love into hate.
Ah, Mr. Cain knows how to cut right to the chase.
Always.
And, even though foreplay can be so appealing in far better developed novels, I find that I don't need it here.
I can't quite explain it, but I can crunch up these hardboiled crime fiction novels like pieces of hard candy.
They remind me that. . . reading can be so damn fun. Like, blowing bubbles with a giant wad of gum in your mouth fun. Like, pink bubble gum fun.
(Three stars when compared to
The Postman Always Rings Twice and
Mildred Pierce). -
I make no conscious effort to be tough, or hard-boiled, or grim, or any of the things I am usually called. I merely try to write as the character would write, and I never forget that the average man, from the fields, the streets, the bars, the offices, and even the gutters of his country, has acquired a vividness of speech that goes beyond anything I could invent, and that if I stick to this heritage, this logos of the American countryside, I shall attain a maximum of effectiveness with very little effort. - James M.Cain
Double Indemnity was one of the first crime thrillers that I read in my life. I reread it after eight years and Cain's prose still stings like a dreadful toothache.
It has a clever plot. A really tight one without too many characters or distracting sub-plots unlike Raymond Chandler or Ross MacDonald or Charles Williams. The sparse prose is very colloquial like some average Joe talking. Cain uses very few similes and metaphors. When he does, they are memorable ones like -
"What I did do was put my arm around her, pull her face up against mine, and kiss her on the mouth, hard. I was trembling like a leaf. She gave it a cold stare, and then she closed her eyes, pulled me to her, and kissed back."
or
"The firelight was reflected in her eyes like she was some kind of leopard."
Cain avoids the flashy stuff and conveys the tormented inner dialog of the main character Huff through simple but hard hitting lines. There are many clever twists. But like I said earlier, Cain does not distract us too much from the main plot. Sometimes when you read a crime fiction novel by the other noted writers of the genre, you wonder why they have to make it all so complicated. None of that "complex plot that is unimportant .... just enjoy the one liners and the twists" crap from Cain. There aren't even any descriptions of the surrounding nature. This is as tight as a crime fiction novel gets with two of the coldest characters ever created in the genre. That grim ending on the ship is enough to fill you with a sense of dread and horror. -
I recently watched the multi-Oscar nominated Billy Wilder film classic from 1944, which remains one of my favourite noir films of all time (Wilder scripted with Raymond Chandler), so decided to settle down to once again be captured by Cain's moody masterpiece over one evening while the rain was lashing down outside.
This is simply put, quintessential noir. Dark, menacing, seductive and taut as wire. Insurance investigator Walter Huff falls under the charm of the wildly wicked Phyllis Nirdlinger to help bump off her controlling but dull husband to claim a life insurance policy that contains a double indemnity clause, meaning twice the amount is payed on death from certain circumstances (in this case falling off the back of a train), but she needs Walter to close the deal, which he agrees. Little to Walter's Knowledge Phyllis has a sting in the tail, which leaves him out cold like a rabbit in the headlights. The murder itself is carried through without any glitches (or so it would first seem), before a college of Walter starts to suspect foul play, and of course from here, you can forget about any happy ending.
The novel is carried forward using a brilliant narrative full of sharp sentences, which are direct, and to the point. Cain wastes no words here making for a read that is well worthy of reading in one or two sitting. The plot itself is nothing new and pretty straightforward, but it's all about how Cain executes it. For a writing of 1936 it really is darkly unsettling, and would have appeared rather shocking at the time. This has no doubt a lasting appeal, and will carry on enthralling readers for many years to come. -
OMG! I cannot believe the ending!
Plain old downright great entertainment here from beginning to end with Cain's story of how to commit the perfect murder.
While I was totally engrossed in the telling, there were a couple of times I had to stretch my imagination a bit, but I loved it just the same, and oh that ending......raised my rating up a whole star!
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James M. Cain shoots onto my list of favorite authors with Double Indemnity. Appearing in serial format in Liberty magazine in 1936, Cain's tale was published as a novella in 1943 and became the source material for a film classic adapted by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler and directed by Wilder the following year. The text is short, poisonously sweet and became the model for much film noir to come, with a devilish dame snaring a useful dope in her web of deceit and murder. Only the eras and instruments change and though set in L.A. against the insurance tables of the '30s, Cain writes as if he spit this out on his Mac.
The story is narrated by Walter Huff, an agent of General Fidelity of California and to hear him tell it, one of the best at what he does. Walter pays an unscheduled call on his client H.S. Nirdlinger, an oil company executive in Hollywoodland whose automobile coverage is expiring. Smooth enough to get past the maid, Walter is greeted by the lady of the house, Phyllis Nirdlinger, donned in blue house pajamas and "a shape to set a man nuts." Libido isn't the only thing Phyllis triggers, inquiring about taking out accident insurance on her husband, accident being the type of policy that only someone who believes their loved one is about to have an accident would request.
Unable to get around Phyllis when it comes to selling her husband insurance products, Walter is summoned three nights later after the maid has gone home and Mr. Nirdlinger is out. She again asks about taking out an accident policy on her husband. Walter's fifteen years in the business tells him exactly what she's asking. One thing leads to another and when Phyllis visits Walter at his place in Los Feliz, he confronts her about her intention to arrange an "accident" for her husband. Feigning shock initially, Phyllis comes around to discussing her ideas with the insurance agent, who thinking with the wrong organ, offers to help.
"All right, how are you going to do it?"
"I was going to take out the policy first--"
"Without him knowing?"
"Yes."
"Holy smoke, they'd have crucified you. It's the first thing they look for. Well--anyway that's out. What else?"
"He's going to build a swimming pool. In the spring. Out in the patio."
"And?"
"I thought it could be made to look as though he hit his head diving or something."
"That's out. That's still worse."
"Why? People do, don't they?"
"It's no good. In the first place, some fool in the insurance business, five or six years ago, put out a newspaper story that most accidents happen in people's own bathtubs, and since then bathtubs, swimming pools, and fishponds are the first thing they think of. When they're trying to pull something, I mean. There's two cases like that out here in California right now. Neither one of them are on the up-and-up, and if there's been an insurance angle those people would wind up on the gallows. Then it's a daytime job, and you never can tell who's peeping at you from the next hill. Then a swimming pool is like a tennis court, you no sooner have one than it's a community affair, and you don't know who might come popping in on you at any minute. And then it's one of those things where you've got to watch for your chance, and you can't plan it in advance, and know where you're going to come out to the last decimal point. Get this, Phyllis. There's three essential elements to a successful murder."
That word was out before I knew it. I looked at her quick. I thought she'd wince under it. She didn't. She leaned forward. The firelight was reflected in her eyes like she was some kind of leopard. "Go on. I'm listening."
After spending a night or two determining that Phyllis hasn't done anything that would land her in trouble if Mr. Nirdlinger were to meet with an accident, Walter makes an appointment with her to discuss accident insurance for her husband, asking her in advance to provide a witness. To his displeasure, Phyllis has her stepdaughter Lola present. The idea of getting the daughter of the man they're planning to murder involved with their plot leaves a bad taste in his mouth, but Walter plunges ahead. The man he's most worried about is Keyes, head of the claims department at General Fidelity, tiresome, but "a wolf on a phony claim."
Walter proposes to Phyllis that her husband meet his end in a railroad accident, explaining that the odds against such a claim are so high that his company would pay off double, $50,000, in what's known as double indemnity. To the surprise of no reader, there are complications. Phyllis explains that her husband dislikes taking the train. Then, Walter receives an office visit from Lola, who inquires about her boyfriend applying for a loan against his car. Walter doesn't let his feelings for the sweet girl deter his plot against her father.
Fate intervenes when Mr. Nirdlinger, scheduled to leave town for a class reunion, breaks his leg. Phyllis talks him into booking passage on the train. The perfect murder ensues. The young owner of General Fidelity suspects suicide and plans to challenge the claim in court. Keyes insists this is the wrong call because in his view, Mr. Nirdlinger was murdered and thinks he might be able to prove it. Keeping his distance from Phyllis, Walter spends personal time with Lola and learns that accidental death seems to follow Phyllis Nirdlinger around. Lola intends to testify to what she knows at the inquest. That leads Walter to a logical conclusion.
I don't know when I decided to kill Phyllis. It seemed to me that ever since that night, somewhere in the back of my head I had known I would have to kill her, for what she knew about me, and because the world isn't big enough for two people once they've got something like that on each other. But I know when I decided when to kill her, and where to kill her and how to kill her. It was right after that night when I was watching the moon come up over the ocean with Lola. Because the idea that Lola would put on an act like that in the courtroom, and that then Phyllis would lash out and tell her the truth, that was too horrible for me to think about. Maybe I haven't explained it right, yet, how I felt about this girl Lola. It wasn't anything like what I had felt for Phyllis. That was some kind of unhealthy excitement that came over me just at the sight of her. This wasn't anything like that. It was just a sweet peace that came over me as soon as I was with her, like when we would drive along for an hour without saying a word, and then she would look up at me and we still didn't have to say anything. I hated what I had done, and it kept sweeping over me that if there was any way I could make sure she would never find out, why then maybe I could marry her, and forget the whole thing, and be happy with her the rest of my life. There was only one way I could be sure, and that was to get rid of anybody that knew. What she told me about Sachetti showed there was only one I had to get rid of, and that was Phyllis. And the rest of what she told me, about what she was going to do, meant I had to move quick, before that suit came to trial.
It’s so often difficult for me to relate to the fiction published before my birth. Not only has the world changed, but our attitudes and relationships with each other have evolved as a result. James M. Cain is one of those writers who digs deep, excavating lust, greed, the office, fear, love. These never become passé. The changes in topography to Los Angeles or to technology (the lengths Walter goes to make sure no one telephoned or rang his doorbell on the night of the murder are precious) add to the charm of the novel as opposed to making it feel old. Much of the novel seems like it could've been written yesterday instead of 1936.
You think I'm nuts? All right, maybe I am. But you spend fifteen years in the business I'm in, you'll go nuts yourself. You think it's a business, don't you, just like your business, and maybe a little better than that, because it's the friend of the widow, the orphan, and the needy in time of trouble? It's not. It's the biggest gambling wheel in the world. It don't look like it, but it is, from the way they figure the percentage on the 00 to the look on their face when they cash your chips. You bet that your house will burn down, they bet it won't, that's all. What fools you is that you didn't want your house to burn down when you made the bet, and so you forget it's a bet. That don't fool them. To them a bet is a bet, and a hedge bet don't look any different than any other bet. But there comes a time, maybe, when you do want your house to burn down, when the money is worth more than the house. And right there is where the trouble starts. They know there's just so many people out there that are out to crook that wheel, and that's when they get tough. They've got their spotters out there, they know every crooked trick there is, and if you want to beat them you had better be good. So long as you're honest, they'll pay you with a smile, and you may even go home thinking it was all in the spirit of good clean fun. But start something, and then you'll find out.
By electing to have Walter narrate the tale, Phyllis's voice does take a backseat. Far from a full-throttled femme fatale propelling the story forward as they have in film, we only see of Phyllis what Walter does, which seems like it's through his white T-shirt as it's coming off. Her misdeeds aren't discovered as much as they’re dumped on him by Lola. But that same narration by Walter gives the novel remarkable momentum, black wit and panache. These virtues were abundant in the 1944 film, in which Billy Wilder cast likable stars Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck as the low down dirty killers and movie mobster Edward G. Robinson as the virtuous Keyes.
Length: 38,130 words
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To be honest with you, this book wasn't even on my radar. I was having lunch with someone when we got around to talking about my love for Crime Mystery Fiction and they suggested this as their favorite of those type books. Lo and behold, they have a copy of it and I read it that very day. At only a little over 100 pages, it's easy to read and the fast-pace of it makes it all fly by. Oh, and not to mention that it really is that good!
Double Indemnity is about an insurance salesman who meets a woman interested in taking out accidental insurance on her husband. His attraction to her clouds his usual judgement and next thing he knows he's wrapped up in a murder plot that just might do him in. But it's not as simple as that. (It rarely ever is, right?) As love and loyalty to one's work complicated things even more, this story becomes all that much more exciting. There's affairs, death, family troubles, more death, love, DEATH...yeah, it's good.
I wasn't expecting to read this book, but it's going to be remembered as one of my all time favorites thanks to my friend randomly recalling a book they read back in college. Brains are weird.
What did I think?: I was pleasantly surprised by this story and couldn't put it down until I knew how it all ended. Thankfully I had a rainy Saturday and a broken leg so I could afford to get lost in a story like this.
Who should read it?: If you like crime and/or mysteries, or even more the femme fatale style of writing then I think you'll enjoy this one. Apparently many people read this back in school, have seen the movie or the play version - I had not, sadly - and reading back through it as an adult made it all that much more enjoyable. I highly recommend it, especially if you're looking for an action packed, easy read.
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Walter Huff is an insurance salesman who gets mixed up with a man's attractive young wife and together they conspire to murder him. While waiting for the heat to die down, Huff gets involved with the woman's stepdaughter and things spiral out of control...
While I wouldn't go as far as to call this my favorite noir novel, it's definitely as good as, if not better than, The Postman Always Rings Twice. Cain does a phenomenal job building the tension with his minimalist style. It may only be 128 pages but that's about all you could handle. The way Walter and Phyllis murder her husband is both outlandish and extremely plausible. When it comes out that Phyllis is a sociopath, you feel for Walter despite knowing he's a murderer. -
فیلم آن را قبلاً دیده بودم و کتاب را هم الان خواندم
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Judging by its popularity on Goodreads, not too many people appear to be familiar with James M. Cain's novel "Double Indemnity". That's quite comprehensible, considering that first of all, it's a rather old book which has successfully been adapted into an equally old black-and-white Hollywood classic, and second of all, the story is rather dated and not quite as relevant or interesting today as it may have been thirty, fifty, eighty years ago. I still love it to death. Let me elaborate a bit on why I think this is such a great book (and, for that matter, such a great movie).
Billy Wilder's "Double Indemnity" from 1944 is one of my favorite movies of all time. I've seen it several times and never get tired of watching Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, Edward G. Robinson and Jean Heather act the hell out of this script. At first, I wasn't even aware that Wilder's film was not based on an original screenplay like many of his other films (such as "The Apartment", "Some Like It Hot" or "Sunset Boulevard"). As soon as I found out, I didn't hesitate to seek out the source material and started reading it, all the while wondering what it was that fueled my fascination with Wilder's film to such an extent. After all, "Double Indemnity" tells an entertaining, exciting and engaging story, and it consists of numerous twists and turns you wouldn't necessarily expect, but is it completely original? We all have seen, heard and read fragments of this story before: An insurance representative falls in love with a housewife and lets himself be talked into a murder scheme involving insurance fraud. Any more details would reveal too much about the nature of the story, but let it suffice to know that the character of the femme fatale has appeared numerous times before, and so did the unsuspecting husband, the unfortunate protagonist or the investigator.
At its heart, "Double Indemnity" is a classic thriller. Unlike today, when the landscape of novels is dominated by many mystery and thriller books seeking popularity and shock value by involving as many unexpected twists and turns as necessary to keep readers engaged, in the 1930s it wasn't quite as usual to read novels which saw the plot take a different direction every five pages or so without losing its credibility. I wouldn't consider the genre's popularity a problem at all, but the sheer quantity of contents available ensures that not too many plot twists can still come as a surprise to the reader. As a result, what is needed is the strength of the writer to ensure that no matter how a) original and b) absurd these plot twists are, they are credible enough to not cause the reader to lose their interest.
James M. Cain excels at this task, and so does Billy Wilder in his award-nominated screenplay based on Cain's novel. The dialogue is absolutely perfect; there is not a single unnecessary line, and yet it feels like you are following these characters on their odyssey through Hollywood as though they really existed. Atmosphere and setting have always been two important aspects strongly connected to classic Noir films from the Golden Age of Hollywood, and they do likely play a major part in the film's success, but the film couldn't have been as great without Barbara Stanwyck's magnetic performance as the scheming Phyllis, and the novel couldn't have been as great without Cain's electrifying characterization of Phyllis.
Perhaps I only love the film so much because Barbara Stanwyck is one of my favorite actresses and I have been fascinated with her career and her life for a long time, but reading the novel reinforced my opinion that this is one of the best thrillers ever written. It's the stuff classic Hollywood was made of and many future soap operas would take inspiration by, and James M. Cain probably found motivation in a few films released before his book only to take a completely new direction with his novel. It's not his only book which has successfully been adapted by Hollywood (two more of his novels are
The Postman Always Rings Twice and
Mildred Pierce), but I genuinely can't imagine them to be as great as this. It's a rare case that I find the adaptation to be as great as the novel itself, but this is one of those instances.“I had killed a man, for money and a woman. I didn't have the money and I didn't have the woman.”
Also, if you are not convinced yet: this book is really short at just about 100 pages, so if you have about three or four hours (plus two more hours to either watch "Double Indemnity" for the first time or to give it a rewatch) to spare, then why are you still hesitating? -
3.5*
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One of the most tightly written books I've ever read, by the godfather of the type of noir fiction that I love. Not. A. Word. Wasted. In the book, Walter Huff goes to the Hollywood Hills to sell a car insurance renewal to Mr. Nirdlinger. But he gets caught up and starts falling hard for Mrs. Nirdlinger, who doesn't waste any time asking about accident insurance. We can pretty much guess where that leads! But even though we know where this is going, like a car crash, we can't take our eyes away. Even Walter knows where it's heading but he can't turn away either, because to his horror, he realizes that he's in love.
I knew then what I had done. I had killed a man. I had killed a man to get a woman. I had put myself in her power, so there was one person in the world that could point a a finger at me, and I would have to die. I had done all that for her, and I never want to see her again as long as I lived.
This is the perfect introduction to classic noir and it inspired everything that came afterward. It's even better than the classic,
That’s all it takes, one drop of fear, to curdle love into hate.
The Postman Always Rings Twice, but it has a more disappointing ending. This is one of the closest examples of a perfect book to me but falls a bit short because of that strange resolution. If it had Postman's ending (or the movie adaptation's ending) it would be perfect! But still, it feels like Cain took everything good about Postman and ramped it up a notch here. This book seems like a better draft of that book, making it even tighter, more suspenseful, and even more razor sharp, with an even more relentless pace and even stronger characters (how awesome was Keyes?) and dialogue. And in 1944, Billy Wilder teamed up with Raymond Chandler and churned out a movie that might be even better! But Double Indemnity is everything that I look for in crime writing and in books in general. Cain doesn't waste any precious time with bullshit. It is a lean, efficient, and suspenseful piece of writing, and dark as the grave..."I loved her like a rabbit loves a rattlesnake. That night I did something I hadn't done in years. I prayed.
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BkC12) DOUBLE INDEMNITY by James M. Cain: I liked the book better than the movie.
I don't think I agree with myself on this one. I like both book and movie, and the movie version is a wonderful treat
available free on YouTube. I'll put the two on a par.
Rating: 4.875* of five
The Book Report: Yet again I feel like a fool offering a summary of a story doubtless extremely well-known: Young wife of older, boring man seeks life insurance for the coot from desperately smitten insurance agent. His lust for her leads him way past the usual level of customer service, leading him to establish an alibi for them both AFTER killing the old bore...errr, boy. Hardly a spoiler since it's the whole point of the movie.
The payoff doesn't go quite as smoothly as the conspirators might wish, and after various cool twists and turns, the story wraps up with a humdinger of an ending that I am gnawing my knuckles to the bone not to reveal. Many, including >moi, saw it coming on p2, but let me assure you that, while almost fanning the last pages of this short novel in your haste to find out what you probably already know is going to happen, you will not be bored.
Or if you are, please, if you value our friendship, don't tell me.
My Review: *gruntled sigh* Noir books and films explain, if one needs an explanation, the concept "it hurts so good." The characters are low, vulgar trollops and cads (my favorite kind of people!), and the good guys...the cops, the mothers, the priests...are all such knobs, such squares, so unspeakably unhip as to be dismissable.
Yeah, that's a life worth livin', that is. And we get to live it vicariously through these louche, blowsy people while maintaining our public solid-citizen-ness. For some folks, it's horror novels; for some, it's technothrillers; for just about everyone in the world, based on sales figures, it's online porn; all of us, each and every one, need to get out of our own humdrum skins and into the world of another, very different character once in a way. (Of course, by that reasoning, I'd read John Cheever and John Updike like a madman, with their dull straight boys lusting after slatternly women, this being the polar opposite of my own needs and desires. There are exceptions to every rule.)
And in Double Indemnity, what could be more deeply satisfying that the idea of dressing in the coolest clothes, wearing the hottest, sexiest shoes, and causing such an insane level of desire in someone that he's willing to murder another human being to be with you? What more powerful feeling in the world can there be than to make a reasonable, adult male go bonkers, throw away every scruple and moral that he's ever had, and do your bidding? And for the boys, what could possibly be hotter than a lust-object that teases and promises and offers oh-so-coyly to fulfill the dark fantasy of total control, of ownership, that comes (pardon) from breaking every rule *at the desired one's behest and behalf*? It's mutual submission and mutual domination in a subtle, minute-by-minute exchange of roles.
OF COURSE one wouldn't do that in Real Life, would one?, so that's why James M. Cain wrote the story. And it is BLAZING HOT, on screen or on page.
Read this bad boy. You get to channel your inner naughty, naughty, naughty self. I don't suggest doing either the reading or the movie-viewing alone. If I need to explain why, you shouldn't be reading this review. -
"I stared into the darkness some more that night. I had killed a man, for money and a woman. [But] I didn't have the money and I didn't have the woman." -- narrator Walter Huff
On the heels of devouring The Postman Always Rings Twice I continued raising Cain (haha!) by moving onto the author's other known So-Cal crime classic, the Chandleresque Double Indemnity. (It was probably no coincidence that Raymond Chandler wrote the screenplay for the 1944 cinematic version of this novel, which became a widely acclaimed slice of film noir via legendary director Billy Wilder.) These two Cain-penned books share quite a few obvious similarities - the common man protagonist falls into love-lust with an unhappily married woman, the duo then plans a seemingly 'perfect' murder of the cuckolded husband to collect guaranteed insurance money, things inevitably go awry and the suspense increases - yet Double Indemnity still carves out its own distinct path.
Here we have insurance salesman Walter becoming very smitten with the bored but pretty housewife Phyllis, married to a mid-level oil executive who is a new policy customer. Since Walter astutely knows the insurance biz (*and author Cain's real-life research really shines through, as he was told when interviewing actual insurance agents that "People think this stuff all comes from the police. That's wrong. All big crime mysteries in this country are locked up in [our] company files, and [we] get wise to that fast"*) he soon concocts a scenario to knock off the hubby so Phyllis can then rake in some major dough. Of course, it doesn't goes quite as he planned, or we wouldn't have a story at all. The book was especially good when the readers realize late in the narrative just how warped and evil one of the characters possibly is, which both ratchets up the tension and sheds new light on the person's murky background. Poor Walter - he should've just remained an honest man! -
My god, the utter callousness of it all!
It's not too spoilery to give you a summary of the book, however, if you intend to read Double Indemnity, I'd suggest not reading the next two sentences. SUMMARY: A woman consults an insurance agent about taking out a special kind of insurance on her husband, the kind which sends up red flags for the agent, red flags which he ignores. Seduced by the woman and greed, the insurance agent helps her commit murder.
The flippant way in which human life is treated by the narrator reminded me of Humbert Humbert from Lolita. He's a special kind of psycho you don't often see in the papers. In books perhaps he's more common.
This is James M. Cain, so the writing for the genre is fantastic. It's a freaking classic! Sure it doesn't have the name recognition as his famous
The Postman Always Rings Twice, but don't sell this one short. I enjoyed it just as much as Postman. There's a similar tone and cadence in them. The emotions are strained, tense, constrained and then explosive.
This isn't cops-n-robbers crime, this is crime straight out of the newspapers...exactly where former journalist Cain got the salacious story. Well worth your time. Give it a read! -
There's a reason this is a classic and has stood the test of time, and you only have to read the first few pages to fully understand why. It all starts with a delicious chill up your spine, your eyeballs riveted to the page, your breath held, the "gotta know what happens next" monster rattling the bars of his cage. Your first thought: Strap on baby, this is gonna be g-ooood
Cain is a MASTER storyteller: his cutthroat instincts for plot and pacing unerring and enviable. His ear for dialogue is enough to make grown men cry and women purr. It's sharp, with staccato beats and primal rhythms. And he makes it all look so easy which anyone who has ever put pen to paper knows, easy it is not ... ever. Whether you believe Cain to be a genius, an idiot savant or the prince of pulp, there's no denying his enduring appeal and lasting legacy to the world of literature. And not just the written word, but film as well, since so many of his stories have been adapted into silver screen classics that resonate with awesomeness to this day.
As a movie,
Double Indemnity is pure gold, yet the vein from which it is mined is richer still. Barbara Stanwyck as Phyllis is THE femme fatale, yet there is so much nuance and depth missing from her character in the film (in what is already an amazing performance). Cain's Phyllis is so much more than a sultry seductress and the cold-blooded spider hanging in her web. But I will leave the pleasure of that discovery to you.
I waited waaaaay too long to read this. -
It's a shame that most people are more familiar with the movie based on this novel than with the book itself. Don't think for a moment that if you've seen the movie you've read the book because it's just not so. There are a number of differences between page and screen, and also, watching the movie doesn't allow you to really enter and experience Cain's dark and cynical worldview as much as reading the book does. If nothing else, the ending of this book (as compared to the movie) is just phenomenal, creeps up on you slowly, and is nothing at all like the easy way out offered by the film. Then there's Cain's prose. One of my favorite quotations from this book is the following:
"She's made her face chalk white, with black circles under her eyes and red on her lips and cheeks. She's got that red thing on. It's awful-looking. It's just one big square of red silk that she wraps around her, but it's got no armholes, and her hands look like stumps underneath it when she moves them around. She looks like what came aboard the ship to shoot dice for souls in the Rime of the Ancient Mariner."
If that isn't a picture in words, I don't know what is.
Cain is a true master of his craft, and Double Indemnity is one of the best noir novels in existence. I could go on, but why? The book is beyond perfect, and if you read it slowly, you'll totally understand what I mean. -
Double Indemnity (1935) is written by the same author, James Cain, who wrote The Postman Always Rings Twice, which I also just read. I have more than once seen the great 1944 film, which was directed by Billy Wilder and co-written by Wilder and another wonderful noir detective writer, Raymond Chandler. It’s a tight little architecturally-designed novel about an insurance salesman who meets a woman interested in taking out accident insurance on her husband. For some reason (okay, she’s attractive and seductive), this mild-mannered insurance agent agrees to get involved with a murder plot and actually helps her (improbably named Mrs. Nirdlinger?) plan it out. The narrator has typical thirties sensitivity about women who says things like this: “A woman is a funny animal.” He seems to be the passive victim of a pretty “shape,” as he says. The story is told from the perspective of this doomed agent and not a tec tracking the case; as he confesses:
“I loved her like a rabbit loves a rattlesnake.”
The early story is very persuasive about the ins and outs of insurance law; you can see Cain did his homework on what would fool an insurance company and a police department.
The term "double indemnity" refers to a clause in certain life insurance policies that doubles the payout in rare cases when death is caused accidentally, such as while riding a railway. Guess where someone dies?
So, did they live happily ever after? What do you think, wise guy? As our schleppy anti-hero admits, “I had killed a man, for money and a woman. I didn't have the money and I didn't have the woman.” And at one point says, “. . . and I never want to see her again as long as I lived.”
But then things get (even more) complicated, involving the step-daughter of the woman. The resolution has so much going on it will make your head spin. It’s short, like Postman, so you can read it or listen to it in a couple-three hours. This is a great and classic noir tale, much lauded, from one of the greats, made into a classic film I’ll again soon see, yay.
PS: And both resaw it, wow, and read the screenplay by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler, double wow. Must see, at the very least. -
Devo riconoscere che, nonostante la mia scarsa passione per il genere noir/hard boiled, La morte paga doppio è davvero un gioiello. Condivido i commenti positivi al libro e aggiungo solo che la cosa stupefacente è quello che Cain ha saputo fare, in un romanzo tanto breve, rispetto alla costruzione della trama e la definizione dei caratteri. La sua scrittura essenziale e precisissima, la sua abilità nel creare tensione al massimo e colpi di scena perfetti dovrebbero essere un esempio per tutti gli autori di genere che spesso non raggiungono gli stessi risultati ottenuti in quest’opera, nemmeno quando si concedono di scrivere le loro storie in molte, molte più delle 128 pagine di questa edizione.
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Sin lugar a dudas es una buena historia, con "femme fatale" incluida. Sin embago, lo que me ha llamado la atención de esta historia es su autor. Parece ser que le gustaban las novelas románticas, pero después de escribir El cartero siempre llama dos veces, ya no hubo manera de dar marcha atrás y escribir historias románticas.
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A day in the life of an insurance salesman, who looks for some extra bucks and meets a woman who wants to make more than just a few bucks. He thinks he knows all the tricks and has a plan, will it work? Hard boiled noir style thriller really keeps you wanting to see how the plan unfolds.
"All right, I'm an agent. I'm a croupier in that game. I know all their tricks, I lie awake nights thinking up tricks, so I'll be ready for them when they come at me. And then one night I think up a trick, and get to thinking I could crook the wheel myself if I could only put a plant out there to put down my bet. That's all. When I met Phyllis I met my plant."
Update due to watching the movie JUNE 6th 2011
Just finished watching the movie and i am frustrated at the changing of the story. I done a search on the glorious web of information and Wikipedia gave me the needed info. pasted below. There needs to be a real adaptation done of this Clint Eastwood please take note! Eastwood has been converting quite a few books to movies and is a good director. It seems Raymond Chandler rewrote story in the screenplay.
From Wikipedia about the movie and book..
James M. Cain based his novella on a 1927 murder perpetrated by a married Queens, New York woman and her lover whose trial he attended while working as a journalist in New York. In that crime, Ruth Snyder persuaded her boyfriend, Judd Gray, to kill her husband Albert after having him take out a big insurance policy — with a double-indemnity clause. The murderers were quickly identified, arrested and convicted. The front page photo of Snyder's execution in the electric chair at Sing Sing has been called the most famous newsphoto of the 1920s
Initially, Wilder and Chandler had intended to retain as much of Cain’s original dialogue as possible. It was Chandler, ironically, who first realized that the dialogue from the novella would not translate well to the screen. Wilder disagreed and was annoyed that Chandler was not putting more of it into the script. To settle it, Wilder hired a couple of contract players from the studio to read passages of Cain’s original dialogue aloud. To his astonishment, Chandler was right and, in the end, the movie’s cynical and provocative dialogue was more Chandler and Wilder than it was Cain
Cain himself was very pleased with the way his book turned out on the screen. After seeing the picture half a dozen times he was quoted as saying, " ... It's the only picture I ever saw made from my books that had things in it I wish I had thought of. Wilder's ending was much better than my ending, and his device for letting the guy tell the story by taking out the office dictating machine — I would have done it if I had thought of it."
James M Cain himself
Chandler does a cameo role in the movies, seen here seated.
Stanwyck as Dietrichson, the Femme Fatale
http://more2read.com/?review=double-indemnity-by-james-m-cain -
"No one has ever stopped reading in the middle of one Jim Cain's book." - Saturday Review of Literature
This is true. This is my second Cain and I read this non-stop. Well, that was possible because it was Sunday today and I was just at home.
I liked this better than his other equally popular book,
The Postman Always Rings Twice (3 stars). Well, I have not seen the movie adaptation of this book while when I read "Postman," I had already seen and liked the Jack Nicholson-Jessica Lange movie in the 80's so I already knew what would happen. Here, I kept on leafing through the pages because there was always some revelation and I was always guessing at the end of each page.
The story is about Walter Huff an insurance agent who falls in love with a married woman, Phyllis Nirdlinger. They meet when Huff passes by the house of his client, Phyllis' husband, to remind him of the insurance that is about to expire. Phyllis gives out clues that she no longer loves her husband so she thinks of "liberating" (killing) him. Huff agrees and they plan how they will do it and the next pages are just full of twists and turns that will definitely hook you till the book's last two words: "The moon."
Unbelievably great. The very first crime novel that I really liked. I did not know that I would enjoy a roman noir novel. This will definitely not be my last. -
Avide maree
Un ottimo noir, attraversato con intensità da passioni fatali e enigmatiche: una storia progettata con creatività e sapienza, che delinea un orizzonte umano inquietante e dipinge personaggi profondi e originali, mentre perseguono volontà determinanti. L'autore rende concreta e verosimile una psicologia prismatica e senza legge, con una tecnica sofisticata e selvaggia, senza mai perdere il centro del racconto e disfacendosi di ogni ipotesi prevedibile. Ombre, paure e desideri disegnano un destino tragico e inevitabile, mentre l'inganno e la finzione pervadono ogni sorta di emozione e sentimento, saturando il cristallo del reale di luci spettrali e atmosfere diaboliche. Uno sguardo spietato sulle nostre naturali inclinazioni. -
Photograph by Paramount Pictures (no photographer credited)
A few weeks ago, I read and thoroughly enjoyed James M. Cain's
Mildred Pierce. So I thought I'd pick up another well-known tale from the master of hard-boiled fiction.
Double Indemnity is a brief novella about an insurance salesman, Walter Huff, who falls for Phyllis Nirdlinger, the wife of a client, and agrees to sell her accident insurance on the guy and then help kill him so she collects on it. Because the murder involves an accident on a railway – a pretty rare thing – the "double indemnity" clause kicks in. She'll collect a cool $50,000, which must have seemed like a lot in 1936, when the book was serialized in Liberty magazine.
Cain obviously did his research on the insurance biz, its workers, investigators and potential scammers. Some of the best passages involve the experienced Walter telling us about his industry. He knows so much that he carefully covers his tracks at every turn.
Unfortunately, Cain isn't as careful depicting his torrid love story. I wanted more sparks between Walter and Phyllis. They've barely met before Walter is hooked and putting his career – and life – on the line for her. And what about Phyllis's husband? We barely know anything about him – a missed opportunity, I think, to learn more about Phyllis, hint at some tension in their marriage, and generally raise the stakes for the murder itself.
But there is an entertaining subplot involving Phyllis's step-daughter, Lola, and her mysterious boyfriend. And 1930s Los Angeles comes alive in a few brief, sharp strokes. (Perhaps it's because of the famous Billy Wilder film, but when I pictured the events happening they were in black and white.)
One of Cain's stylistic triumphs is the first-person narration by Huff himself. Who is he telling his tale to? That, the suspenseful plot and the ending (different from the film), helped make this a fun bit of escapism during this difficult year. -
Historia interesante sobre una esposa que desea quedarse con el dinero de la póliza de seguro de vida de su esposo. La trama policíaca va directo al grano, es ágil, sin muchos rodeos, completamente lineal y con buen final. Se hizo una película en 1944 muy buena para los estándares de la época.
