Serenade

James M. Cain (1892-1977) is best known for his novels The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity, which were made into films. Serenade, also made into a film, is a lesser-known book published in 1937 that taps into Cain's interest in music and singing. The plot is about as wild as could be imagined: washed-up opera singer lands in Mexico, meets a prostitute, agrees to go to Acalpulco to help her manage a brothel, gets stuck in an empty church during a thunderstorm, miraculously recovers his voice, smuggles the prostitute to Los Angeles on a freighter captained by an opera-loving Irishman, becomes a movie star, and ... that's just the half of it. There's not much violence, but the hard-boiled label still fits because of Cain's frank, for the time, approach to sex. There is a world-weary directness throughout that is very appealing, and as a stylist Cain hits the bull's-eye.