Please Mr Postman

After yesterday's post about nothing, I figured it would be prudent to write a scholarly book review here lest someone think that I do not take blogging with all the seriousness this weighty and ancient practice merits. Then I remembered that most scholarly book reports are painfully dull, which is the way one establishes one's scholarly credentials in writing a book review.  Writing dull book reviews is not terribly amusing for the person composing such reviews.  But, here is a book review nonetheless.

James Cain, The Postman Always Rings Twice
This is a 1934 crime novel--not really a murder mystery since you hear the tale from the perspective of the criminal.  Drifter meets hot babe married to boring guy and they (drifter and babe) proceed to plan the perfect murder (of boring guy, naturally).  Does the perfect murder end up becoming the Perfect Murder?  You'll have to read the book to find out.  Which won't take too long, by the way--the story is about 100 pages long.  It is included in the  Library of America volume Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 40s.  It's a good story, very well told--which isn't surprising since it is in the Best Of the 30's and 40's volume.

Two items of interest from the novel:

1. Can the perfect murder be staged these days?  It seems like it would have been a lot easier in the old days, but now with DNA detection and modern electronic equipment, it is undoubtedly a lot more difficult.  I think the only way to have a chance is to murder someone with whom you have absolutely no connection--you might be able to pull off the murder of a randomly chosen person, but then that sort of defeats the purpose of wanting to plan the perfect murder (well, for anyone who has a motive for murder other than some sort of strange pleasure in the idea of murder itself--but about people with such motives, the less said the better).  So, if you wanted to murder your boss, for example (and the nice thing about my job is that since I really don't have a boss, there is no danger of this being interpreted as some sort of innate desire on my part), how would you go about doing it in such a manner that there is no chance you would be caught and convicted?  The thought experiment requires that there be no chance of being caught--not that there be a low probability--a low probability isn't the perfect murder.  I have not yet figured out how to pull it off.  The difficulty of imagining such a thing, however, comes as a bit of a relief--if it was easy to plan the perfect murder, I suspect there would be more of them--then again, I suppose I have absolutely no idea how many perfect murders have occurred recently since that is the whole point of the perefect murder. This is getting rather morbid.  So on to the cheerier item:

2. The title of the book is funny in a way.  There is no postman in the book, let alone a postman who rings twice.  No postman is even mentioned.  No bells are rung either.  So, what is the title?  It turns out the title is a reference to a remark made by someone the author knew.  There is no way to know from the remark itself how it relates to the plot, but once you hear the context in which the comment was mode, there is a connection to something in the plot.  There is absolutely no way, though, to figure out from reading the novel what the title would mean.  That really amuses me.  I like the idea of a title which actually does relate to the plot, but that only the author would know what that connection is.  I don't know of any other book for which that is true--most authors apparently succumb to the temptation to give their books titles whose connection to the substance of the book is apparent. 

No mystery about the title of this post, by the way.