Cain is best remembered for his prose style, and this was his most effective technique. A master of the wellpaced story, Cain eschews dramatic exposition, ignores the past histories of his characters, and places the reader into the action of the story in the very first paragraph. The Postman Always Rings Twice is a brilliant example of this technique. From its tantalizing first sentence, "They threw me off the hay truck about noon," the story line never sags. By the end of the second chapter, Cora and Frank have slept together and therefore willingly chained themselves to the love-rack, and they have made their plans to kill Nick in order to capture their wish-come-true. What remains is for Cain to tell the story of how the love-rack triumphs and the wish-come-true vanishes in defeat — and in the telling the pace of the novel never slows. Tom Wolfe...