Recommended reading - The Postman Always Rings Twice, by James M. Cain (1934):

The Postman Always Rings Twice

by James M. Cain

Published by Vintage.

First published 1934.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0679723250

ISBN-13: 978-0679723257

Description:

“A good, swift, violent story.” – Dashiell Hammett.

“A poet of the tabloid murder.” – Edmund Wilson.

An amoral young tramp. A beautiful, sullen woman with an inconvenient husband. A problem that has only one grisly solution — a solution that only creates other problems that no one can ever solve.

First published in 1934, The Postman Always Rings Twice is a classic of the roman noir. It established James M. Cain as a major novelist with an unsparing vision of America’s bleak underside and was acknowledged by Albert Camus as the model for The Stranger.

“I make no conscious effort to be tough, or hard-boiled, or grim, or any of the things I am usually called. I merely try to write as the character would write, and I never forget that the average man … has acquired a vividness of speech that goes beyond anything I could invent.” – James M. Cain.