NEWS

 Lost Cain Novel to be Published by Hard Case Crime

Up to no good: Barbara Stanwyck as the Dame and
Fred MacMurray as the Detective in  Double Indemnity.

Hard-boiled crime fans everywhere are salivating over news that Hard Case Crime, the publisher devoted to publishing vintage and new pulp crime novels in the style 30's 40's and 50's was in possession of a previously lost James M. Cain novel.
Cain, of course was the god of the noir novel,  whose work was immortalized in the classic films Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice and Mildred Pierce, among others. He died in 1977 in Maryland, but had lived in Hollywood throughout the 1930s and 40s when was hired away from the New York papers to write for films.
Literati reached out to Charles Ardai, the editor of Hard Case Crime, to get the scoop. Here it is.


Where was the manuscript discovered?

I hunted for it for years and finally found it, with the help of my film and TV agent, in the files of an old-time Hollywood agent, H.N. Swanson, who had represented authors like Faulkner and Fitzgerald and Chandler and Cain when they worked in the film business.

How was it authenticated?

Swanson handled Cain’s work, so he had extensive files on Cain, and there’s enough of a trail to make me confident that the manuscript is the real thing.  It’s also got edits all over it in Cain’s handwriting, and the plot matches the brief description of it Cain gives in his biography. 

When did Cain write it?  Before or after titles that are in print?

After.  It was the last crime novel he ever wrote.