6/12/2023 0 Comments Sunburn by Laura Lippman![]() ![]() But in almost all of the classic noir stories (Cain’s “Mildred Pierce” aside) the protagonists - the people who make things happen - are men. A man walks into a rural California diner in “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” commences a torrid affair with the wife of the owner and plots to kill her husband in “Double Indemnity,” an insurance agent helps a client kill her husband for the insurance money. ![]() Unlike contemporaneous hard-boiled crime writers whose work featured knight-errant detectives (Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler), Cain’s protagonists are the victims, suspects or perpetrators of crimes. Cain, whose novels arguably helped establish the standard for the genre in both fiction and film. When you think of noir fiction - the erotic, morally ambiguous crime stories popularized in the first half of the 20th century - which authors come to mind? Noir geeks might cite Jim Thompson’s “The Killer Inside Me” or Cornell Woolrich’s “The Bride Wore Black,” but the forerunner and best known of them all is James M. ![]()
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