There is a special debt we owe them, a debt to Chandler, Hammett and Cain. They excised pointless ornamentation, moved their stories forward with a spare, ruthless vigor and so superimposed the realities we already knew with characterizations we could believe, that they achieved a dreadful, and artistic, inevitability….

"The Institute" is a faint and embarrassing echo of the persuasion that used to be [Cain's]. It is not the intent of this reviewer to make a witless and vulgar display of disapproval…. The intent is to show where grasp of the methods and materials has faltered and weakened.

The plot is uniquely absent.

It is too easy to isolate the improbabilities….

Instead, it is interesting to isolate Cain's remaining strengths. Pages 64 through 75 concern the use of business muscle to force the acquisition of a company in trouble. A lot of this is tight and fast and believable. (p...