James M. Cain

James M. Cain was an American author and journalist, best known for his significant contributions to the creation of the roman noir genre of books. He was born in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1892 into an Irish Catholic family, the son of a prominent educator and an opera singer. Cain's love for music came from his mother, but his hopes of becoming a singer himself were crushed when she told him that his voice was not good enough. After graduating from Washington College, he began his career as a journalist for The Baltimore Sun. Cain was drafted into the United States Army during World War I and spent the final year in France writing for an Army magazine.

After the war, Cain continued his work as a journalist, writing editorials for the New York World and articles for American Mercury. He also served briefly as the managing editor of The New Yorker, but later turned to screenplays and finally to fiction. Although Cain spent many years in Hollywood working on screenplays, his name only appears on the credits of three films, Algiers, Stand Up and Fight, and Gypsy Wildcat. Cain's first novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice, was published in 1934, and two years later, Double Indemnity was published, which was initially serialized in Liberty Magazine.

Cain's works often reflected his love for music and the opera. For instance, in Serenade, an American opera singer loses his voice and re-enters the States illegally with a Mexican prostitute. In Mildred Pierce, the only daughter of a successful businesswoman trains as an opera singer, and in Career in C Major, an unhappy husband of an aspiring opera singer discovers that he has a better voice than she does. Cain continued writing up to his death at the age of 85. His last three published works, The Baby in the Icebox (1981), Cloud Nine (1984) and The Enchanted Isle (1985) were published posthumously. Although Cain published many novels from the late 1940s onward, they never quite rivaled his earlier successes.