The 1944 film version of James M. Cain‘s Double Indemnity is one of my all-time favorites and perhaps because I haven’t seen it in years is why this book is so refreshing to me. I was frequently surprised by the story’s twists and I found myself wondering what exactly was changed to make the film adaptation, though I am certain many changes were made. This novel just didn’t give me the sense of déjà vu I was expecting. I must give it a rewatch some time.

When smalltime insurance salesman Walter Huff meets seductive Phyllis Nirdlinger, the wife of one of his wealthy clients, it takes him only minutes to determine that she wants to get rid of her husband–and not much longer to decide to help her do it. Walter knows that accident insurance pays double indemnity on railroad mishaps, so he and Phyllis plot frantically to get Nirdlinger on–and off–a train without arousing the suspicions of the police, the insurance company, Nirdlinger’s dishy daughter, her mysterious boyfriend, or Nirdlinger himself. This brief but complex novel is a perfect example of the ordinary-guy-gone-disastrously-wrong story that Cain always pulls off brilliantly.

from amazon.com review

One of the pleasures of reading this novel is how it is still relevant today. That is to say, it does not come off as dated and many other books published in its time–1935–do. For example, it examines the greed of the insurance business. How it will try to elude payment even in the absence of actual evidence of fraud. That is most certainly a practice that continues today. One only must look to insurance claims filed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina for proof of that.

Cain’s characters are all interesting studies, each with understandable–if also unidentifiable–motivations. The protagonist, Walter Huff, though an accomplice to murder, is just an ordinary guy led into temptation by a femme fatale. But his motive for murder is two-fold. While he undoubtedly wants to rub the husband out to get to the wife, he also just wants to play a game of sorts. In no more than a page or two, Walter relates to the reader that he wants to test the system and he exacts a murder plot in an attempt to prove that his cunning mind and deep knowledge of his job will allow to get away with murder. Too often he has come across claims from people who didn’t know what he does about how insurance works and because of that, he believes he can be successful where the others have failed. It’s as if he were playing a simple game of cards for a modest bet. And what he wants to is to prove that the house does not always win.

In the end, it isn’t so much his morality that is his undoing as it is his affection for a rather unlikely love interest. And as the story reaches its climax he’ll find himself in danger for his role in the whole sordid mess and his paranoia surrounding it.

It is a rather short book, comparable to another of his novels I recently read, The Postman Always Rings Twice. I think I liked this one more. It felt somehow more immediate and urgent and engaging. Someday I will have to return to the library and check out Mildred Pierce which sounds like a fascinating examination of a twisted mother/daughter relationship and is about three times as long as these other two stories.