The Complete Crime Stories by James M. Cain

Published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road on May 26, 2015

James M. Cain wrote in an era when real men slapped women around because that’s what real men did. Of course, it was also an era in which women slapped men who insulted them and who, motivated by profit or jealousy, murdered men while pretending to be their victims. And an era in which middle-aged men proposed to sixteen-year-old girls after being acquainted with them for five minutes -- to be followed, presumably, by a lifetime of slapping each other. At least that’s the world that Cain portrayed in these stories.

Most of the stories are relatively short but one of my favorites is relatively long. “Career in C-Major” deals with a “roughneck” contractor in the depression era and the woes he experiences after marrying a socialite who blames him for ruining her chance to become an opera singer. With the help of another singer, the husband devises a scheme to put his cold-hearted wife in her place. It’s an unusual love story about a man who falls in love -- with himself (or, at least, with his own voice) and with a woman whose identity comes as a surprise. “Career in C-Major” is the most substantial and most interesting story in the volume, but it doesn’t have a thing to do with crime.

Several other entries in this collection of crime stories are not crime stories, which might disappoint readers who want the book to live up to its title. They are nevertheless excellent stories. “Coal Black” is about a miner and a sixteen-year-old girl who get lost in a mine that the miner believes to be haunted (a superstition compounded by the bad luck of finding a female in a mine). Another story of two people thrown together in a dangerous environment, “The Girl in the Storm,” goes in a completely different direction.

“The Birthday Party” is an amusing story about an insecure, boastful boy who is embarrassed by his attempt to deceive a girl. “Mommy’s a Barfly,” one of the best titles in the history of short stories, is about a soldier, his wife, their little girl, and an eventful evening in a bar. “The Taking of Montfaucon” is a war story about a soldier who might have been awarded a medal if he hadn’t gotten lost.

The most compelling crime story (and my other favorite in the collection) is “The Money and the Woman.” A bank officer wonders if he’s been played for a sucker by a teller’s wife, but as the story unfolded, I kept changing my mind about whether the woman was an innocent victim or a con artist. The ending carries a nice surprise and the entire story builds suspense and intrigue.

Most of the other crime stories are also quite good. Without quite forming the intent to do so, a hobo named Lucky kills a railroad detective, then obsesses about all the ways in which he might get caught. “Dead Man” tells how Lucky deals with his sense of guilt. “Brush Fire” tells of a man who saves another man’s life, and then wishes he hadn’t.

Written in the style of a semi-literate narrator and steeped in the vernacular of its time, “The Baby in the Icebox” is a story of ironic justice involving a man who has no luck taming tigers, including his wife. A semi-literate narrator surfaces again in “Pastorale,” the story of a man who feels the need to confess his crime.

A miscommunication caused by a failure to distinguish one accent from another subjects a man to a hotel scam in “Two O’Clock Blonde.” A prison break and the chance to start a new life lead to an ironic ending in “Joy Ride to Glory.” A “Cigarette Girl” needs help with a gambling issue, and of course the guitar player who helps her immediately decides to marry her.

The collection includes three stories that fall below the standard set by the others. “Pay-Off Girl” is an uninspired story about rescuing a woman in trouble and giving her a better life. “The Robbery” is a nothing story about a man who confronts a neighbor he suspects of burglarizing his apartment. Set in Mexico, “Death on the Beach” is sort of a tragic (but not entirely believable) love story that revolves around a little boy who swims too far from shore. Other than those three, however, this is a strong collection that showcases Cain's mastery of the short story.

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The Magician's Wife by James M. Cain

First published in 1965; published digitally by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Media on January 15, 2013

The Magician's Wife was first published in 1965. Taking it on its own terms, without comparison to James M. Cain's classic hard-boiled fiction of the 1930s and 1940s, it is a flawed but entertaining crime story.

Clay Lockwood is an executive working for a large meat distributor. He begins an affair with Sally Alexis, who trains the waitresses at a popular restaurant chain. Sally is married to a magician. After two hours in bed that must have been amazing, Clay wants to spend the rest of his life with Sally. Yet Sally won't get a divorce while her husband's wealthy father lives, because she fears her father-in-law would punish her by disinheriting her son. Adding some zest to the story is the magician's bosomy assistant, a sparkplug named Buster who makes passes at Clay when she isn't pursuing the magician and pretty much every other successful man she meets.

Before long Sally's mother, Grace, enters the story, and Clay briefly turns his amorous attention toward her. Soon thereafter, entirely too coincidentally, Clay meets the magician, a vain chap he instantly dislikes. Still, having met the guy, Clay feels he can no longer be a weasel. He wants Sally to confront the magician and divorce him, a plan Sally promptly rejects because there's not enough money in it. For Sally to really make out, both her father-in-law and her husband need to die. You can see where this is going, right? Actually, a reader won't know exactly where the story is going because the plot takes some unexpected turns.

I never quite believe stories in which a guy not only falls in love with a woman on their first night together but insists they get married -- unless the guy is a desperate loser, which Clay isn't. Neither did I believe that any man in Clay's position would fall in love with Sally. Apart from being scheming and greedy, she's more than a little crazy, as she demonstrates when she destroys Clay's apartment and hacks his artwork to pieces during a lover's quarrel. Maybe if Clay had known this nutcase more than a short time I could understand his feelings for her, but Cain didn't sell me on the relationship. Any sane man would have been horrified every time he had a conversation with her.

I also had trouble believing that Clay broke up with the woman he loved and the next night was hitting on her mother. In fact, Clay repeatedly bounces from Sally to Grace and back, apparently happy to settle for either one of them. And then there's Buster, who rates an enjoyable kiss. I mean, I know guys are dogs, but come on! If Clay's behavior isn't quite admirable, it at least has the virtue of being amusing. It's even more amusing that he proposes to women he hardly knows as casually as if he were ordering a steak from a menu.

Although the novel was written in 1965, the courtroom scenes have the sort of drama that is common to crime novels of the 1940s and 1950s. The defense lawyer argues his case and cross-examines with rhetorical flourishes that give the story its best moments. The novel bristles with tension in the last few chapters, although the ending is something of a let down.

Clay is always telling himself to get on with his life while making one decision after another that undermines that desire. That's a common failing and Cain illustrates it convincingly. Notwithstanding my inability to believe some aspects of Clay's character, I found it easy to sympathize with him, despite his less-than-exemplary conduct during much of the novel. Only a good writer can pull that off. I recommend The Magician's Wife to crime fiction fans for that reason, and for the novel's entertaining moments, despite its flaws.

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