The cocktail waitress

Joan Medford is a beautiful 21-year-old with a problem. Her abusive, alcoholic husband just managed to get himself killed in a drunk driving accident. The cops are still poking around the circumstances of his death. She's entrusted the care of her toddler to her sister-in-law while she puts her life back in order, but said sister-in-law is growing increasingly reluctant to return the boy. Joan needs money and fast, so she decides to put her head-turning curves to work at a cocktail bar. Her world-weary coworker clues her in that women with their kind of figures and flexible morals can earn even better money on the side, and the wolfish men in the bar make no attempt to hide their desire for the young widow. Joan's need for financial security sets her on a dangerous path, and not everyone she comes into contact with will survive.

This hard-boiled crime novel is written from the (first-person) perspective of a femme fatale. Or is it? The book reads just as well as the tale of a sympathetic and beleaguered woman in desperate circumstances. This ambiguity is key to the novel's appeal. She could be simply unlucky or a criminal mastermind. Joan runs hot and cold throughout the narrative and does display a ruthless streak when it comes to securing a better life for her and her son, but all of the men in her life are untrustworthy and trying to use her to satisfy their own desires. There's a mean matter-of-factness to the narrative, and sexuality and abuse are presented in a surprisingly frank way for vaguely 1950s setting. The dialogue is deliciously snappy, in true noir tradition. And even when it looks like the major issues have come to a resolution, Joan's tale ends with one last masterful gut-punch from the author.

The book concludes with a lengthy Afterword by the editor, Charles Ardai, explaining the process by which this book was completed and released decades after James M. Cain's death. While it existed in complete manuscript form, Cain had continued tinkering with it in the years up to his death, and the book as published is a synthesis of multiple drafts left in various states of completion. While many posthumously published works tend to disappoint, this book was most definitely worth the effort to polish up and release. The final product is surprisingly seamless.

Lean, mean, and sexy, this book is an easy recommendation for fans of the hard-boiled crime genre.

Joan Medford is a young beautiful woman in an unhealthy marriage, but when her husband dies in a suspicious car accident, does that mean her life will improve? No, she now has to take a job as a cocktail waitress to make ends meet and somehow make enough money to finally be able to take her son back from her mother in law. On the job, two men take a special interest in her, one really gets Joan’s blood racing and the other is a very wealthy older man who tips very generously if she gives him her attention.

It’s no secret that I’m a huge James M. Cain fan; The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity are two classic noir novels that I highly recommend but there is another side to this author. Cain wrote a very emotionally charged noir novel called Mildred Pierce which makes up the top three essential Cain novels. The Cocktail Waitress really reminds me of Mildred Pierce, you have all the noir elements plus the female protagonist not to mention the emotionally charged plot. This is a previously unfinished novel by Cain but don’t let that worry you, he did finish the novel but he had not finished the revisions before he died, but it took over thirty years for this book to finally come out. The editor, Charles Ardai used Cain’s notes to finish the revisions of this book and it still reads and feels very much what you expect from a book by this Noir master. He was even quoted in saying; “Together with Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain is universally considered one of the three greatest writers of noir crime fiction who ever lived, and for fans of the genre, The Cocktail Waitress is the Holy Grail. It’s like finding a lost manuscript by Hemingway or a lost score by Gershwin – that’s how big a deal this is.”

Joan is everything you want from the protagonist; strong, witty and beautiful. She knows what she want (her son back) and she is determined to make her life better on her own. But the drama of working in a cocktail lounge might be a little too much for her. Her mother in law is now convinced that cocktail waitress is just code from something more. Joan’s on a mission and won’t let anyone or anything stand in her way; which makes her a great femme fatale.

The Cocktail Waitress is a fast paced, hard hitting novel with complexity; a well-crafted book that was just a joy to read. I loved the sinister elements that transported this from just an emotional journey to a classic James M. Cain style noir novel. I’m so glad that Charles Ardai took the time and effort in finishing this book so we can all enjoy it. If you liked Mildred Piece then you are going to love reading The Cocktail Waitress.

The review originally appeared on my blog; literary-exploration.com/2012/10/28/book-review-the-cocktail-waitress/