[The Magician's Wife], Cain's first novel in some time, follows in all essentials, as the publisher candidly admits, the pattern he developed more than thirty years ago. There is a minor variation in that the hero is not a more or less disreputable drifter but an up-and-coming executive of a meat-packing company…. This man, Clay Lockwood, stops for lunch at one of a chain of restaurants with which his firm does business, and is immediately impressed by the hostess…. After lunch he says, "Sally, I've fallen for you," and, as every reader of Cain knows, the only question is how long it will take them to get into bed together….

But, like other Cain heroines, she has a husband she would like to get rid of—Alexis, a magician, son of "a fabulously rich man." She wants, Clay suspects, to dispose of the father-in-law, too, and he decides...