James M. Cain- Double Indemnity

Double Indemnity

Orion

James M. Cain

1943

“I had killed a man, for money and a woman. I didn't have the money and I didn't have the woman.”

I knew within less than a page of James M. Cain's seminal crime noir novella Double Indemnity that this guy was good; real good. The power of Walter Huff's unrepentant narration jumped off the page within seconds, managing to be both dark and murky and yet as clear as day. There's only been one other time where I'd felt so totally in the thrall of such a voice, and that was Dashiel Hammett's classic The Maltese Falcon. Maybe we've been spoiled by decades of sharp genre parodies, but it's so easy to read this book and hear the narration speak out in your head, in a deep, cynical male voice. It's absolutely spot-on definitive hardboiled crime fiction in style and substance, dramatic, intense and cool from start to finish. 

The key to the whole piece is the awesome character of the aforementioned Walter Huff, an intelligent and  cynical insurance salesman in California who is inspired to instigate events that will change his life for ever when one day, during a simple visit to chase-up a car insurance renewal he meets a woman he finds irresistible. Phyllis Nirdlinger is a femme fatale from head to toe, and Huff smells it from the get-go. When she subtly asks him about procuring her husband life insurance without his knowledge, Huff knows exactly what her game is, and spells it out for her. Then he shocks her by telling her it'll never work and she'll be easily caught... unless she sticks with him. Using his in-depth knowledge of his company and insurance law, Walter Huff plots the perfect murder.

All of this happens within barely ten pages, as Cain sets a breakneck pace. Somehow he manages to make Walter's prior innocence seem realistic, while self-justifying the reasons for comitting murder for profit. There's a partly procedural tone to the proceedings as Walter and Phyllis set-up and then carry out their plan, making Mr. Nirdlinger's broken neck look like an accident following a fall from a moving train. It's tense, enthralling stuff, as Huff bitterly describes the act of murder and then the fallout of paranoia and seeds of hatred between the co-conspiritors. To make matters worse, Huff develops a freindship and then romantic feelings for Nirdlinger's 19-year-old innocent daughter. It's one glorious mess.

There's a sense of critical moralising towards the end of this short read, as the walls begin to close in around poor Walter, perhaps to a very slightly overbearing extent, but that's really all I have to criticise about it. Cain encapsulates the spirit of noir crime within every sentence, and gives all of his characters distinctive, strong personalities. In only a short space of time he develops a compact, enthralling plot that blurs the lines between typical assertions of morally good and bad characters. Walter Huff is a complex, ambiguous man who embodies the style of a whole genre effortlessly, and I found him so likable that I couldn't help but hope he'd get away with it even though he was as guilty as sin. Double Indemnity is a damn-near perfect slice of luxorious genre fiction, as good as you're going to get and as cool as anything I've read.