The Enchanted Isle

by James M. Cain

While searching for her father, a runaway stumbles into a deadly mess

At thirteen, Mandy was too old for spanking when her stepfather first took her over his knee. She’s didn’t mind the pain, but hated the look in his eye and his lingering hand. By the time she’s fifteen, this young spitfire can’t take any more of his unwanted groping. With seventy-four bucks in her pocket, she packs her things and buys the bus ticket that will change her life.

She meets Rick at the bus stop—a handsome young thug who’s a few days removed from his last bath. He’s charming and sympathetic, so she buys him a ticket and, on the ride to Baltimore, tells him that she’s going to find her real father. But wouldn’t it be better, Rick suggests, to greet Daddy in style? Of course, a mink coat would cost a little money, but Rick knows just where to get it. His plan is daring, foolish, and highly dangerous. What teenage runaway could resist?

Genres: Mystery, Science Fiction, Crime, Noir

169 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

James Mallahan Cain (July 1, 1892–October 27, 1977) was an American journalist and novelist. Although Cain himself vehemently opposed labeling, he is usually associated with the hard-boiled school of American crime fiction and seen as one of the creators of the "roman noir."

He was born into an Irish Catholic family in Annapolis, Maryland, the son of a prominent educator and an opera singer. He inherited his love for music from his mother, but his high hopes of starting a career as a singer himself were thwarted when she told him that his voice was not good enough.

After graduating from Washington College where his father, James W. Cain served as president, in 1910, he began working as a journalist for The Baltimore Sun.

He was drafted into the United States Army and spent the final year of World War I in France writing for an Army magazine. On his return to the United States he continued working as a journalist, writing editorials for the New York World and articles for American Mercury. He also served briefly as the managing editor of The New Yorker, but later turned to screenplays and finally to fiction.

Although Cain spent many years in Hollywood working on screenplays, his name only appears on the credits of three films, Algiers, Stand Up and Fight, and Gypsy Wildcat.

His first novel (he had already published Our Government in 1930), The Postman Always Rings Twice was published in 1934. Two years later the serialized, in Liberty Magazine, Double Indemnity was published.

He made use of his love of music and of the opera in particular in at least three of his novels: Serenade (about an American opera singer who loses his voice and who, after spending part of his life south of the border, re-enters the States illegally with a Mexican prostitute in tow), Mildred Pierce (in which, as part of the subplot, the only daughter of a successful businesswoman trains as an opera singer) and Career in C Major (a short semi-comic novel about the unhappy husband of an aspiring opera singer who unexpectedly discovered that he has a better voice than she does).

He continued writing up to his death at the age of 85. His last three published works, The Baby in the Icebox (1981), Cloud Nine (1984) and The Enchanted Isle (1985) being published posthumously. However, the many novels he published from the late 1940s onward never quite rivaled his earlier successes.

Reviews

[Slagle Rock · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am a big fan of James M. Cain but this book, published after his death, is a train wreck. Just bizarre. It is told from the point of view of a runaway teenage girl who gets caught up first with a young drifter and then with two hardened bank robbers who force the girl and her drifter friend into pulling off a bank heist. The set-up is absolutely implausible and the main character’s family back story also left me scratching my head. It’s weird and as other reviewers have noted, there is a great deal of strange and inappropriate kissing going on between the girl and various adults in her life. The book was released in 1985 and Cain died in 1977. I couldn’t find any information about when it was written, though I didn’t search all that hard. I’m guessing the late 1960 based on references to a “hippie commune” and television news. It’s oddly out of step with any imaginable time period and I wonder if the author had just lost his mind at the time of its writing. Still, the prose mostly holds together but for a few bad decisions to use creative misspellings like “lease” for “least” and “omit” for “admit.” The functionality of the writing says something about Cain as an author: he was good. This book probably shouldn’t have been published. It adds nothing to the body of his work. Yet, I am glad I read it, simply because it is so strange.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. When Cain wrote this, he had trouble finding a publisher because in the mid-70s he was still writing fiction straight out of 1933. He claimed, quite honestly, that he didn’t know how to write young characters from the new generation. And so he wrote novels with contemporary settings (early 1970s) with Depression-era traits. Rather than being seen by publishers as the authentic voice of a by-gone era, Cain was perceived as a hopelessly out-of-date relic. I feel that if Cain had lived another decade, into the late-1980s, he would have been rediscovered with a surge of popularity, as the ‘80s saw a major resurgence of interest in the culture of noir and the 1930s and ‘40s. Cain just missed it, so never achieved any late-career revival.

It’s a shame because this novel, finally published after his death in 1985 during just that revival, is classic Cain: tawdry, fast-paced, violent, and a touch off-kilter with more than a suggestion of the taboo. The novel can be summarized in two words: daddy issues. And Cain plays it to the hilt, as he always tends to do. Just a glance at the handful of reviews on Goodreads will see that Cain still manages to push certain societal pressure points even fifty years after this was written. It’s not as great as his early work, but fans may enjoy it, even as the first-person voice of the protagonist, 16-year-old Mandy, doesn’t sound quite authentic, even from the 1930s perspective.

[Brandon Montgomery · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book starts strong, suggesting a Bonnie and Clyde setup - But it was just the old bait-and-switch trap. The middle section drags along and eventually descends to hokey melodrama. A problem common to all of Cain's novels narrated by women reoccurs in this book: The thoughts, words, actions and emotions aren't representative of a real (or plausible) woman at all, rather they're the casually sexist idea that exists only in the minds of old men belonging to Cain's generation.
That being said, there are moment of enjoyment and excitement to be gleamed, if you can stand the filler and sentiment.

[Jade Aslain · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's interesting, I will give it that much. The plot feels a bit contrived, but a decent idea --or collection of ideas, I should say. This would make a great low budget movie, actually --but that's the power of cinema, to make a crap story interesting. I thought for sure James Cain would have something going here, even if it wasn't a masterpiece like Double Indemnity. Well, I guess not all the novels you write will be any good, much less be masterpieces.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very weird and not as good as his other books, but Cain does know how to speed a narrative along.

[Don Edgar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this hard-boiled, noir stuff.

This book is from late in Cain's career and is set in the era when a girl was described by her measurements ... and Mandy, age 16, thoughtfully provides these right in the first sentence.

Mandy (as is sometimes the case in Cain's novels) has a mother who is even hotter than she is ... but who has a checkered past. This leaves Mandy with conflicted information regarding her own parentage and the novel takes off from there. The story involves a bunch of shootings, a no-good boyfriend, a bank robbery, some mistaken identities, a semi-luxurious life on the run, lots of pie-ala-mode, and a happy ending (For Mandy; not so much for the others).

Little Mandy, it turns out still had the same measurements in the last paragraph as in the first ... so that was nice to find out ... after all she had been through.

[Chris Rhatigan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has a lot of similarities with Cain's recently published work, The Cocktail Waitress. It's written in the voice of a female criminal who's "setting the record straight" about a high-profile case that the media has picked apart. So the perspective (a teenage girl) is a bit different for a crime fiction novel.

It reads fast and tight at under 170 pages. Cain's characters are depraved as always, and the central crime, a bank robbery, seems secondary to the drama with Mandy's family. Their frequent "kissing sessions" are just one of many disturbing elements of the book.

I found this beat-up paperback in a used book for $2. It's a title I'd never even heard of and I'm glad I picked it up. It's not quite Double Indemnity or The Postman Always Rings Twice, but it's still Cain.

[Andrew · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not for me. I found it kinda creepy being that it was written by an older guy in the voice of a 16 year old girl. Something just struck me odd. I will give his other stuff a go though.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of Cain's lesser works, unless you're a fan of child abuse, statutory rape and several varieties of incest.

[Ladiibbug]

2/26/16 lib -0- / tb -0- / #2 pbs

[Guillermo Galvan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Something worth a speed read.