Attention, James M. Cain fans: if you've been desperate for another shot of Cain's noir, you can quench your thirst with The Cocktail Waitress. It took Hard Case Crime editor Charles Ardai nine years to track down this unfinished manuscript from Cain's final years, and he's done a superb job of bringing the dark and gritty story back to fully hardboiled life.
Meet beautiful Joan Medford of Hyattsville, Md., (where Cain lived in his final years). She's telling her story into a tape recorder and recounting it all, "including some things no woman would willingly tell." Her husband, a brute, has just died in a car accident (Double Indemnity redux?). The young woman is broke, and her three-year-old son, Tad, is being taken care of by her unruly sister-in-law. Fortunately, with a little help from those gorgeous gams and the way she fills out a flimsy peasant blouse without a bra, she secures a job as a cocktail waitress. Two regular customers vie for her attention: a handsome young stud named Tom and the elderly Earl K. White III, a wealthy, drab financier and widower. In pure Cain style, things get messy--and deadly.
What will Joan do--or, better yet, not do--to get her son back? The ending is vintage Cain. The Cocktail Waitress is a not-to-be missed crime thriller for all Cain fans. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher