Packed and Loaded: Conversations with James M. Cain

In these never-before-published interviews the author of Double Indemnity The Postman Always Rings Twice and Mildred Pierce discusses his first notions to be a writer his newspaper days his Hollywood years and Marilyn Monroe with brutal honesty and in a tone and vernacular that only a master like Cain could command. Also in this critical tell-it-like-it-is study Cain reveals his thoughts on Hemingway Fitzgerald Arthur Miller Hammett Chandler and in his eighty-fifth year what he planned for his future. Packed and Loaded is James M. Cain unplugged at his finest. The manuscript is seasoned with original epigraphs about this major American writer from masters like Elmore Leonard Sue Grafton Robert B. Parker Dennis Lehane Peter Lovesey Phil Lovesey Edward D. Hoch Katherine Hall Page Robin Moore William G. Tapply and the grand master of mystery himself Rex Stout. John McAleer graduated from Harvard University with a Ph.D. in English Literature and was the author of over a dozen books including an Edgar Award-winning biography of Rex Stout. He was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Emerson. He wrote critically-acclaimed studies of Thoreau and Dreiser as well as a definitive novel on the Korean War Unit Pride.