The Cocktail Waitress [Paperback]

Following her husband's death in a suspicious car accident, beautiful young widow Joan Medford is forced to take a job serving drinks in a cocktail lounge to make ends meet and to have a chance of regaining custody of her young son. At the job she encounters two men who take an interest in her, a handsome young schemer who makes her blood race and a wealthy but unwell older man who rewards her for her attentions with a $50,000 tip and an unconventional offer of marriage... This is vintage Cain ... Let's go get that book, baby. Let's read it. Let's get stinko. –The Washington Post

entertaining and cleverly plotted –Editors' Choice, New York Times

Fittingly for the endpoint of a long and meaningful career, Cain saves his best twist for the very last page of his very last book, a haymaker from the blind side, so carefully finessed and camouflaged through the book as to bring a tear to a glass eye — another writer’s jealous acknowledgment. It is a moment that draws Joan’s world and Cain’s view of desire and consequence into tight focus. One thinks of the author well into his ninth decade, setting down those final passages with a hidden smile and a writer’s certain knowledge that they won’t see this coming. He was right. –New York Times

“I think James M. Cain is one novelist who has something to teach just about any writer, and delight just about any reader.The Postman Always Rings Twicewas a work of genius. So it's good news thatThe Cocktail Waitress, Cain's last novel has finally been published.” –Anne Rice

“Swift and absorbing…pulses with more authentic primal energy than the work of any number of Cain imitators from the 1930s to the present.” –Wall Street Journal

The Cocktail Waitress was found among his papers after a decade-long sl3