There is nothing in ["The Baby in the Icebox and Other Short Fiction"] that will enhance Cain's reputation or seduce new readers….

[The editor] tells us that one of Cain's themes is the doom of joint guilt: When two people engage in an evil act, they cannot share their terrible secret and live on the same earth—they turn on each other. But to me, the theme that purrs in the engine of Cain's best work … is the proposition that love is dangerous. For Cain, when the lower regions start to percolate, there is sure to be a burnout in the brain. Cain is not a man for meaningful relationships and marriage contracts; for him the libido levels logic every time….

The pieces in the first part of this collection smack of cracker-barrel cuteness and mawkishness. Cain himself claimed that many of them were conscious imitations of Ring...