Welcome back to Books With Cause. Let’s dive straight into my latest review.
Double Indemnity left me a taste to explore more of James M. Cain’s work. The man left more than twenty novels/novellas behind, so there is plenty to sink my teeth into. I don’t know if and when I’ll ever get to all of it, but we’ll see how things go. This article belongs to Cain’s last-ever book, and there is an interesting story behind it.
The Cocktail Waitress focuses on Joan Medford, a young woman whose alcoholic and abusive husband dies in a car accident. Joan is left destitute with a young son she can barely afford to look after. Joan’s son goes to stay with his aunt (Joan’s sister-in-law), Ethel, on what is meant to be an interim basis. But Ethel – who can’t have children – is determined to keep the boy on a permanent basis.
Joan is a strong-minded, independent woman, and she’s not afraid to roll up her sleeves and work hard to make a better life for her and her son. Her goal is to be financially stable so she can take her son home again for good. She takes a job in a cocktail lounge and is a natural – by her own admission – thanks to the way the uniform shows off certain assets. Before long, she has two men vying for her affections. Earl K. White, a wealthy and elderly widower with angina, and Tom Barclay, a young and handsome schemer. Joan likes Tom, but she knows he’s bad news. While she knows she should like Earl, and he would solve all her issues if she married him, but his touch repels her. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the police are investigating Joan, because they believe the death of her first husband was suspicious. Joan is the one telling this story, which leaves the reader wondering if we believe her.
Now, as I stated above, this is the final book by James M. Cain, although he died in 1977 and this book was published in 2012. He wrote multiple drafts, including starting in third-person POV before switching to first, but he was never completely happy with it, and therefore he died with the book effectively unfinished.
Things may have remained that way if it weren’t for Charles Ardai. For those who don’t know, Ardai is an author as well as a founder of Hard Case Crime. Hard Case Crime is an imprint that publishes books in the style of hard-boiled fiction, both originals and new editions of classics. I must say that I am a huge fan of Hard Case and have a fair amount of their books in my collection. Stephen King has published three original novels through Hard Case Crime, and I have discovered a couple of other authors through their range too. Ardai even wrote the novelisation of The Nice Guys, a brilliant movie starring Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe as an unlikely duo of private investigators.
Anyway, it was Cain’s biographer who alerted Ardai to the existence of multiple drafts of The Cocktail Waitress. Of course, Ardai, as a Cain fan, couldn’t turn down the chance to get his hands on it. Ardai is an experienced editor, so this wasn’t uncharted territory for him.
In fact, this edition of the book features a lengthy afterword from Ardai on the process. In the afterword, he talks in detail about the different versions of the story across the multiple manuscripts. There were scenes written differently, and scenes appeared in different orders. From what I understand, an editor would usually collaborate with an author, but that wasn’t an option in this case. So Ardai had to make the decisions alone.
As a writer myself, it’s the sort of information I find fascinating. And of course, I can’t help but imagine a scenario where I’d got the opportunity to work on somebody else’s manuscript. The chance to play in the world they’d created.
We’ll never know how Cain would’ve done this book if he’d lived to see it through to the end. But I think Ardai did a stellar job in putting it together. And I hope that Cain would’ve been proud of him and the finished product
My Goodreads Rating: ★★★☆☆ (3 stars)
