Three by Cain: Serenade, Love's Lovely Counterfeit, the Butterfly -- James M. Ca

<br><b>Author:</b> James M. Cain<br><b>Publisher:</b> Vintage Crime/Black Lizard<br><b>Published:</b> 05/14/1989<br><b>Pages:</b> 464<br><b>Binding Type:</b> Paperback<br><b>Weight:</b> 0.84lbs<br><b>Size:</b> 8.02h x 5.23w x 0.83d<br><b>ISBN:</b> 9780679723233<br><p><b>About the Author</b><br>James Mallahan Cain (1892-1977) was a first-rate writer of American hard-boiled crime fiction. Born in Baltimore, the son of the president of Washington College, Cain began his career as a reporter, serving in the American Expeditionary Force in World War I and writing for <i>The Cross of Lorraine</i>, the newspaper of the 79th Division. He returned from the war to embark on a literay career that included a professorship at St. John's College in Annapolis and a stint at <i>The New Yorker</i> as managing editor before he went to Hollywood as a script writer. Cain's famous first novel, <b>The Postman Always Rings Twice</b>, was published in 1934 when he was forty-two, and became an instant sensation. It was tried for obscenity in Boston and was said by Albert Camus to have inspired his own book, <b>The Stranger</b>. The infamous novel was staged in 1936, and filmed in 1946 and 1981. The story of a young hobo who has an affair with a married woman and plots with her to murder her husband and collect his insurance, <b>The Postman Always Rings Twice</b> is a benchmark of classic crime fiction and film noir. Two of Cain's other novels, <b>Mildred Pierce</b> (1941) and <b>Double Indemnity</b>