NEW YORK — The characters are pure noir: Pat, a “dark, heavily handsome thick-shouldered” young man; Myra, a “cheesecakey” woman whose “thick blonde hair” fell “off her bare head to brilliant brassy effect.”
And they talk the way crime fiction characters used to talk, as crafted by James M. Cain, in a short story rarely seen until now.
“Hello there,” she said.
“Hiya.”
“You looking for someone?”
“Sure am. For Johnsie.”
“He just now left.
“In the taxi?”
“For the concert. He likes egghead music.”
Cain’s “Blackmail” is featured in the new issue of Strand Magazine, a quarterly which has unearthed obscure works by Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Shirley Jackson and many others. Written over the latter part of his life and left unpublished, “Blackmail” tells of a blind Korean War veteran known as Johnsie; Pat, the former comrade who now employs him; and Myra, a woman from the past with some hard-boiled ideas about money, and love.
“Here, Cain serves up vintage noir — complete with gritty dialogue, a damaged war hero, and a young femme fatale who thinks she’s a lot harder than she really is — only to then turn the tale on its head in the very final scene,” Strand managing editor Andrew Gulli wrote in a brief introduction.