His frankness - a willingness to show his characters' ugly sides - extends to other aspects of his characters, too.
Cain is also subtle enough to depict Cora as an undeniably attractive woman without forgetting to give her a personality and a past. But the encounters between Frank and Cora - especially the ones that happen early on - are unbelievably intense, almost jarring.
Sex scenes are notoriously difficult to write: they trip up some of the best authors. Most of the shock here comes from the sex. One hundred years after it was written, it's short, tightly written, and, in its way, sort of shocking. I'm not much for crime stories or noirs, but I was pleasantly surprised by this one. I'll admit it: a collector and a completist by nature, I read this one because it made the Modern Library's list of the one hundred best English-language novels of the twentieth century.
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