The Cocktail Waitress by James M. CainMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
Once, years ago, while buying a couple of Black Lizard editions of James M. Cain books, the cashier looked at the books, frowned slightly and said, "You know, he only wrote three good novels. The rest are crap." I was as much surprised by this opinion of Cain's oeuvre as I was at finding a bookstore cashier who had actually read all of Cain's novels.
With every subsequent book I've read of Cain's since The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce and Double Indemnity, I've begun to fear that that cashier might have been right after all.
Cain's writing is at times mediocre, which tends to point to the quality or amount of editing by publishers. The Cocktail Waitress is no exception, or, I should say, the first half of it. It would appear that Charles Ardai, the editor, took more of a hand in the latter part of the novel and, interestingly enough, the writing improves vastly as the story goes on. But unless you've read and enjoyed Cain's later books, you might not like this one.
Although Charles Ardai seems to have information that the book was written around 1975, the book is actually set in about 1961 or '62. I suppose, judging from the number of manuscripts Charles uncovered, Cain might have originally started the book in the early to mid-sixties and reworked it over and over again until his death.
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