The Postman Always Rings Twice
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The Postman Always Rings Twice is a 1934 crime novel by James M. Cain.
The novel was quite successful and notorious upon publication, and is regarded as one of the more important crime novels of the 20th century. Fast-moving and brief (only about 100 pages long, depending on the edition), the novel's mix of sexuality and violence was startling in its time, and saw the book banned in Boston.
Plot summary
The story is narrated in the first person by Frank Chambers, a young drifter who stops at a rural California diner for a meal, and ends up working there. The diner is operated by a young, beautiful woman, Cora, and her much older husband, Nick Papadakis, sometimes called "The Greek".
There is an immediate attraction between Frank and Cora, and they begin a passionate affair with sadomasochistic qualities (when they first embrace, Cora commands Frank to bite her lip, and Frank does so hard enough to draw blood from Cora's lips).
Cora, a femme fatale figure, is tired of her situation, married to a man she does not love, and working at a diner that she wishes to own and improve. Frank and Cora scheme to murder the Greek in order to start a new life together without Cora losing the diner.
They plan on striking Nick's head and making it seem he fell and drowned in the bathtub. Cora fells Nick with a solid blow, but, due to a sudden power outage and the happenstance appearance of a policeman, the scheme is unsuccessful. Nick recovers and because of retrograde amnesia does not suspect that he narrowly avoided being killed.
Still determined to kill Nick, Frank and Cora repeat the first plan, only in a car. Nick is plied with wine, then struck and killed, then the car is crashed. Both Frank and Cora are injured. The local prosecutor suspects what has actually occurred, but doesn't have enough evidence to prove it. As a tactic intended to get Cora and Frank to turn on one another, he charges only Cora with the crime of Nick's murder. They do turn against each other, with Cora insisting upon offering a full confession detailing both of their roles to ensure that she does not take the fall alone. But her lawyer tricks her into dictating that confession to a member of his own staff, which prevents her admission from reaching the prosecutor. With the prosecutor thus having failed to acquire any new evidence, he is forced to grant Cora a plea agreement, under which she is given a suspended sentence and no jail time.
Frank and Cora eventually patch together their tumultuous relationship, and now plan for a future together. But as they seem to be prepared finally to live happily ever after, Cora is killed in a car accident. The book ends with Frank summarizing the events that followed, explaining that he was wrongly convicted of having murdered Cora and that the text is to be published after his execution.
See also
