The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain

Somewhere during the dark times I've somehow had the time to finish a novel I've been meaning to read. Probably because it wasn't too long, at only a little over a 100 pages. I stopped wondering which edition to buy, and just made the plunge and ended up ordering the edition I had been thinking about most: the 2005 Orion paperback edition of the Read a Good Movie series (or something, I still have no idea on how to call this one.)

The Postman Always Rings Twice is one of those crime novels whose fame and notoriety precedes it by a good length: Banned on publication in Boston, for both its violence and sexual content, adapted a bunch of times, including one adaptation with Jessica Lange and Jack Nicholson, and then of course; this little snippet from Frances McDormand:

So yeah I'll be honest, mostly because of McDormand, I was really curious to see how this one would play out.

It was also going to be my first brush with crime fiction, if one doesn't count Sherlock Holmes or Poe, of course.

And it turned out to be a good and pretty compulsive read, although at the start I confess I got a little annoyed by its dialogue.
It's also hardly as erotic or sensational in this day and age. Open up any contemporary grim-dark novel and you're likely to find more graphic depictions of both sex and violence on any given page than you'll find here in the entire novel. That's not to say there's nothing here, just maybe that if you've come looking for it, if you've seen a recommendation somewhere attesting to a state of heightened sensuality, then you're gonna end up disappointed.

As for pluses: One of the best things about the novel is the romance at the heart of it; the relationship between Frank and Cora, and I was taken aback by how much I actually liked it. Not knowing anything about its end I found I was actually rooting for them: Regular flawed people, thrown into passion and crime, inevitably headed toward tragedy. Although not that inevitably.
Added to that, a good plot, with a surprisingly heartfelt resolution.

And keep in mind; heartfelt can go with many a feeling.

Gotta tell you, though, I got a little lost about three quarters in where there's a courtroom trial; with all the explanations that followed, them being all so technical and all, but by the end of the chapter I had caught on and I confess that I was quite amused by the legal wrangling. It's that old saying; only two things are certain in life; death and taxes, or in this case, death and insurance companies investigating their claims.