When it comes to suspense and crime fiction (and their film partners in crime), here are a couple of guys who wrote the book on noir. The Mystery Writers Association named both Cain and Ambler Grand Masters.

James M. Cain’s The Embezzler Out of print, 1936
You’ve seen Mildred Pierce, Double Indemnity & The Postman Always Rings Twice already (you haven’t? why? go rent them!), now read a bit by James Mallahan Cain, the fellow responsible for those films and more. I picked this up at a WV general store’s free bookshelf–I could not pass up the cover and what a great find. Dave Bennett, a former college football star, is now VP for a Los Angeles area chain of banks. While temporarily assigned to a bank, he uncovers an embezzler. A Marylander most of his life, Cain turned to journalism after opera singing did not pan out. He wrote for the Baltimore Sun and lived in Hyattsville-University Park for almost 30 years. OK, we unfortunately cannot sell you this book, but while we cajole a publisher into reprinting it, we recommend the following (and, you may be able to find Money and the Woman, the film based on The Embezzler):

• The Postman Always Rings Twice, $10.95 (the great noir movie stars John Garfield–don’t rent the remake starring Jack Nicholson!) 
• Double Indemnity, $10.95 (the film version stars Fred Macmurray, Barbara Stanwyck & Edward G. Robinson and is an all-time fave)
• Mildred Pierce, $13.95 (another wonderful film starring Joan Crawford)
• Three by Cain (Serenade, Love’s Lovely Counterfeit, The Butterfly), $13.95

Eric Ambler’s Background to Danger $12, 1937