James M. Cain was a caustic writer of newspaper editorials who published his first novel at 42 and his 18th at 84. His short, squalid thrillers made him as famous as Hemingway in the '30s; often more purple than noir, they creaked with ludicrous plot contrivances and panting dialogue, but how the pages crackled! From the first sentence, pitching the reader headlong behind the headlines of tabloid murders, to the last irony, which sounded a note more in keeping with Puritan tribunals than the requisites of hard-boiled realism, Cain drummed his trashy American fairy tales with relentless drive. By 1950, however, his tempo enfeebled partly by his own literary ambition, his audience headed for sleazier pastures. His once enthusiastic critics were silent, his later books ignored. Cain receded into the past, a relic of the Depression frequently bracketed with contemporaries in the hard-boiled schools (detective and proletariat divisions), and his...