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La Ragazza Dei Cocktail (2013)

by James M. Cain(Favorite Author)

3.52 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

8876383913 (ISBN13: 9788876383915)

languge

English

genre

Mystery & Thriller

publisher

Isbn Edizioni

series

Hard Case Crime

review 1: At his best, there is no greater writer than James M Cain. When the Hound heard that there was a new novel from Cain, he immediately made space at the top of his ‘to read list’. Thankfully, The Cocktail Waitress did not disappoint.After her husband’s death, Joan Medford takes a job serving drinks in a cocktail lounge. Young and beautiful, she proves a hit and the tips are good, especially from one rich old gentleman who gives her $50,000 and a proposal of marriage. But Joan finds him repulsive and has her eye on another man, a handsome young rogue. The pressure is on. The suspicious cops are on her case and her dead husband’s family have their own issues with her. And, as we only get Joan’s version of events, we have our own suspicions, too. We like the narrator ... morebut can we trust her?The Cocktail Waitress was discovered among Cain’s papers after a decade-long search. Cain includes elements of own life in this novel whilst returning to familiar themes. As in The Postman Always Rings Twice there’s a love triangle with a young attractive woman, an older unattractive but successful man and a younger man of dubious morals. As in Mildred Pierce, the first-person lead is a strong female struggling to provide for her child and taking a waitressing job.Cain tinkered with the manuscript up to his death, the ending still a work-in-progress. Charles Ardai used the several full manuscripts plus partial ones and various fragments to polish the version now published for the first time.The writing is unmistakeably Cain. Taut, tough, real and raw. With its foreign excursions and many twists this is truly an exciting find from the daddy of noir.
review 2: Quintessential pulp crime fiction edited and posthumously published by Charles Ardai, who, btw, also edited Roger Zelazny. As expected, the characters are all flawed caricatures, and their reactions to certain surreal situations are, at times, completely inappropriate. Ardai has meticulously edited several versions of Cain's many drafts and came up with an enjoyable, fast paced story with a relatively satisfactory ending. less

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