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‘One of the great crime novels of all time’ Tony Parsons, Express

‘Nobody has ever quite pulled it off the way Cain does, not Hemingway, and not even Raymond Chandler’ Tom Wolfe

‘It is no accident that movies based on three [of Cain’s novels] helped to define the genre known as film noir’ NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

‘The most starkly elemental thing that has been written for years’ EVENING STANDARD

The torrid story of Frank Chambers, the amoral drifter, Cora, the sullen and brooding wife, and Nick Papadakis, the amiable but inconvenient husband, has become a classic of its kind, and established Cain as a major novelist with a spare and vital prose style and a bleak vision of America.

Publisher Review

One of the great crime novels of all time -- Tony Parsons * EXPRESS * It is no accident that movies based on three [of Cain's novels] helped to define the genre known as film noir * NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW OF BOOKS * Cain has established a formidable reputation of furious pace, harsh and masterful realism, tough, raw speech right out of the mouths of the people * SATURDAY REVIEW * A sensational achievement ... the story of a man and a woman whose passion, at first crude and then tender, drives them to murder, has a pitiless brevity that has its own magnificence * NEWS CHRONICLE * The most starkly elemental thing that has been written for years * EVENING STANDARD * A good, swift, violent story -- Dashiell Hammett A poet of the tabloid murder -- Edmund Wilson The novel's rattling exuberance makes it impossible to read without becoming physically buzzed * SPIRIT & DESTINY *