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James M. Cain wrote four classic novels early on in his career - The Postman Always Rings Twice, Serenade, Mildred Pierce and Double Indemnity. After that, like his characters, it was all downhill. In the Thirties and Forties Cain was in the right place at the right time, though, and he helped to define the hard-boiled American crime story. He wrote about ordinary men and women and tried to have them behave and talk like real people. He could make the most unpromising subject thrilling, be it the insurance business, pie-making or even opera. (He loved opera and it runs as a theme through much of his writing. Serenade, whose protagonist is an opera singer, is one of the strangest, most twisted thrillers you could ever care to read.) Generally his stories are about small-time losers getting pushed farther down the slope by tough women. Mildred Pierce, though, is about a tough woman with a fatal flaw. Saddled with a lazy drunk of a husband, ruined by the Wall Street crash, Mildred rolls up her sleeves, kicks him out and gets to work building up a pie-making business. The details of this are utterly engrossing. The fatal flaw? Her daughter, Velda. A spoilt little snob who can't bear the fact that her mother has to work for a living. Nothing is good enough for Velda, and Mildred sacrifices everything to make her happy. The book, and subsequent Joan Crawford film, both comfortably straddle the genres of thriller and weepie.

One to read: Mildred Pierce (1941)

Charlie Higson is a comedy writer and performer, and bestselling children's author. In the mid-1990s, with Paul Whitehouse, he created the popular TV comedy The Fast Show. Some years later, Ian Fleming Publications commissioned Higson to write the Young Bond series. The last instalment is due this year.

James M. Cain at The New York Times

Video: Lana Turner in the 1946 adaptation of The Postman Always Rings Twice

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