The Postman Always Rings Twice. by Cain, James M - 1934

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1934. First edition of one of the most important crime novels of the twentieth century, adapted as a motion picture seven times. Octavo, original cloth. Boldly Signed by James M. Cain on the front free endpaper. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket with light rubbing to the crown. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. A very nice example, rare and desirable signed. "It is sometimes easy to trace a literary genre to its source, and James M. Cain's first novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice, is the noir novel that paved the way for all the noir fiction that followed. The famous film starring Lana Turner and John Garfield is notoriously dark, but the novel is even more full of despair and devoid of hope. It is a short book--little more than a novella--but its searing characterization and depiction of tawdry greed and lust is branded into every reader's memory" (Otto Penzler). Listed by Modern Library as one of the 100 greatest novels of the twentieth century.