(pb; 1950: loosely linked sequel to Double Indemnity)
From the back cover
“James M. Cain. . . pairs Jane Delevan and Ed Horner as new lovers in this sizzling divorce novel set in Reno. Cain’s famous insurance investigator, Keyes, straight out of Double Indemnity, puts in a surprising appearance, seven years after solving the earlier murder. When Jane Delevan’s estranged husband Tom shows up, with his first wife, Lady Sperry, in tow, who sets her sights on Ed Horner, Cain serves up a generous helping of Hollywood-ized sloppy behavior. This is Cain’s only true ‘mystery’ novel.”
Review
Seven years after the happenings of Double Indemnity, Barton Keyes, often unlikeable insurance investigator for General Pan-Pacific of California (“Gen-Pan for short”), finds himself attracted to his own possible femme fatale (Constance Sperry) while he works with another Gen-Pan agent, the grudgingly honest and promotion-obsessed Ed Horner who’s in love with another dangerous woman, Jane Delevan (whose husband just took a header over the roof of a building). Things are complicated, fast-moving when another corpse turns up, both tied to the two women as well as Harriet Jenkins, Richard Sperry’s British secretary.
Jealous is not as fun to read as Double, nor is it as easy to follow. Keeping voice-true to its chatty, run-on sentence-spouting narrator (Ed Horner), it moves quickly (with sometimes awkward transition-twist sentences) and piles on the red herrings and twists. A breathless, adrenaline-charged read, it’s a sometimes solid, often dizzying work, one worth checking out if you’re fine with its borderline stream-of-consciousness “voice” and/or a die-hard Cain fan.
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