“The Terrifying Wish that Comes True: On Cain’s ‘The Cocktail Waitress’” from The Los angeles Review of Books:

James M. Cain tells fairy tales that end badly. For Cain, “the wish that comes true” comprises everything from spousal murder to criminally amassed wealth to incest to suppressed homosexual desire. As Freud knew, there’s nothing more shattering than getting what you really want, and Cain’s novels tend to end with the fulfillment of that ultimate secret wish — the protagonist’s death.

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