123 Followers
126 Following
DanSchwent

Dantastic Book Reviews

Part of the growing Dantastic Empire

Double Indemnity - James M. Cain 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.