美国文学大师 詹姆斯•凯因 继《邮差总敲两次门》（14）后又一部轰动文坛的小说。《加倍赔偿》讲叙保险行业的内幕，是凯恩熟能生巧后的翻新之作，全面地体现了 凯恩 谋篇布局的功力，无论是扎实的谜题设计还是动人的情感描写，水准都在《邮差总敲两次门》之上。本书的电影版经由著名导演比利•怀德执导，与《马耳他之鹰》并列美国两大经典黑色影片。
Plot summary
Insurance agent Walter Huff falls for the married Phyllis Nirdlinger, who consults him about life insurance for her husband. In spite of his basic, instinctual decency, Walter allows himself to be seduced into helping the femme fatale kill her husband for the insurance money.
Plot summary
Insurance agent Walter Huff falls for the married Phyllis Nirdlinger, who consults him about life insurance for her husband. In spite of his basic, instinctual decency, Walter allows himself to be seduced into helping the femme fatale kill her husband for the insurance money.
一对恋人试图谋杀阻碍他们的丈夫，结果自然是天理循环，报应不爽。这本书初问世时，曾因作者离经叛道的思想和粗俗利落的文笔引起极大争议。以犯罪者为第一主人公，以凶手做第一人称叙述视角，让读者在感同身受中渐渐与凶手立场趋于一致……这种技巧在今天随处可见，在当时却着实是个创举。作者詹姆斯•凯因是风格近似海明威的美国文学大师，他的这本代表作在兰登书屋20世纪百大英文小说上排名第98位，甚至影响了后来因写出《局外人》而扬名文坛的诺贝尔文学奖获得者加谬；而由意大利著名电影导演卢奇诺•维斯康蒂（Luchino Visconti）1942年拍成其处女作，拉开了战后意大利新现实主义电影的序幕。詹姆斯•凯因的另一部作品Double Indemnity《加倍赔偿》同时名列百大榜第34位。这本已经走入名著行列的名作也算是本榜的贴金之选。
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.
It is also included in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list.
It has been adapted as a motion picture four times; the 1946 version is probably the best known, and is regarded as an important film noir.
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.
The title and explanations of its meaning
The title is something of a non sequitur in that nowhere in the novel does a postman character appear, nor is one even alluded to. As such, its meaning has often been the subject of speculation by writers such as William Marling, who suggested that Cain may have taken the title from the sensational 1927 case of Ruth Snyder. Snyder was a woman who, like Cora in The Postman Always Rings Twice, had conspired with her lover to murder her husband. While it is recognized that Cain used the Snyder case as an inspiration for his 1943 novel Double Indemnity, Marling offered that it was also a model for, and the source of the title of, The Postman Always Rings Twice. In the real-life case, Snyder said she'd prevented her husband from discovering the changes she'd made to his life insurance policy by telling the postman to deliver the policy's payment notices only to her, and instructing him to ring the doorbell twice as a signal indicating he had such a delivery for her.
In the preface to Double Indemnity, however, Cain gave a specific, and entirely different, explanation of the origin the title for The Postman Always Rings Twice, writing that it came from a discussion he'd had with screenwriter Vincent Lawrence. According to Cain, Lawrence spoke of the anxiety he felt when waiting for the postman to bring him news on a submitted manuscript. According to Cain, Lawrence noted that he would know when the postman had finally arrived because the postman always rang twice, and Cain then lit upon that phrase as a title for his novel. Upon discussing it further, the two men agreed such a phrase was metaphorically suited to Frank's situation at the end of the novel.
With the "postman" being God, or Fate, the "delivery" meant for Frank was his own death as just retribution for murdering Nick. Frank had missed the first "ring" when he initially got away with that killing. However, the postman rang again, and this time the ring was heard, when Frank was wrongly convicted of having murdered Cora, and then sentenced to die for the crime. The theme of an inescapable fate is further underscored in the novel by The Greek's escape from death in the lovers' first murder attempt, only to be done in by their second one.
In his biography of Cain, author Roy Hoopes also recounted the conversation between Cain and Lawrence that gave birth the novel's title. Hoopes's account of their conversation is similar to Cain's, but offered extended detail regarding Lawrence's comments. Specifically, in Hoopes's telling, Lawrence did not say simply that the postman always rang twice, but rather said that at times, he was so anxious awaiting the postman's delivery that he'd go into his backyard intentionally trying to avoid hearing the postman's ring. However, Lawrence continued, this tactic inevitably failed because if the postman's first ring was not noticed, he would always ring again, and, even from the backyard, that second ring would inevitably be heard.
In the 1946 film adaptation of the novel, Frank explicitly explains the title in the terms offered by Hoopes's biography of 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.
It is also included in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list.
It has been adapted as a motion picture four times; the 1946 version is probably the best known, and is regarded as an important film noir.
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.
The title and explanations of its meaning
The title is something of a non sequitur in that nowhere in the novel does a postman character appear, nor is one even alluded to. As such, its meaning has often been the subject of speculation by writers such as William Marling, who suggested that Cain may have taken the title from the sensational 1927 case of Ruth Snyder. Snyder was a woman who, like Cora in The Postman Always Rings Twice, had conspired with her lover to murder her husband. While it is recognized that Cain used the Snyder case as an inspiration for his 1943 novel Double Indemnity, Marling offered that it was also a model for, and the source of the title of, The Postman Always Rings Twice. In the real-life case, Snyder said she'd prevented her husband from discovering the changes she'd made to his life insurance policy by telling the postman to deliver the policy's payment notices only to her, and instructing him to ring the doorbell twice as a signal indicating he had such a delivery for her.
In the preface to Double Indemnity, however, Cain gave a specific, and entirely different, explanation of the origin the title for The Postman Always Rings Twice, writing that it came from a discussion he'd had with screenwriter Vincent Lawrence. According to Cain, Lawrence spoke of the anxiety he felt when waiting for the postman to bring him news on a submitted manuscript. According to Cain, Lawrence noted that he would know when the postman had finally arrived because the postman always rang twice, and Cain then lit upon that phrase as a title for his novel. Upon discussing it further, the two men agreed such a phrase was metaphorically suited to Frank's situation at the end of the novel.
With the "postman" being God, or Fate, the "delivery" meant for Frank was his own death as just retribution for murdering Nick. Frank had missed the first "ring" when he initially got away with that killing. However, the postman rang again, and this time the ring was heard, when Frank was wrongly convicted of having murdered Cora, and then sentenced to die for the crime. The theme of an inescapable fate is further underscored in the novel by The Greek's escape from death in the lovers' first murder attempt, only to be done in by their second one.
In his biography of Cain, author Roy Hoopes also recounted the conversation between Cain and Lawrence that gave birth the novel's title. Hoopes's account of their conversation is similar to Cain's, but offered extended detail regarding Lawrence's comments. Specifically, in Hoopes's telling, Lawrence did not say simply that the postman always rang twice, but rather said that at times, he was so anxious awaiting the postman's delivery that he'd go into his backyard intentionally trying to avoid hearing the postman's ring. However, Lawrence continued, this tactic inevitably failed because if the postman's first ring was not noticed, he would always ring again, and, even from the backyard, that second ring would inevitably be heard.
In the 1946 film adaptation of the novel, Frank explicitly explains the title in the terms offered by Hoopes's biography of Cain.