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The Magician's Wife
In The Magician’s Wife, Cain returns to his classic themes of lust and greed. Clay Lockwood, a business executive, falls in love with the irresistible Sally Alexis, wife of a professional magician. Their story is one of the inexorable process of “wishes coming true”―the realization of which was always, for Cain, “a terrifying concept.”
240 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1985
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About the author
James M. Cain
144 books883 followersJames 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
August 18, 2017
I get nostalgia for this type of rip-roaring fun, this on-the-verge of exploitation and then some yarn. Scrumptious to see an immoral man (he's got three different dames) struggle. And as a reader, the prose is smooth (only the coutroom scenes are stagnant), the pace fast, & the surplus of scenes of domestic violence heavenly (& if you know your Cain then you must know what I'm speaking about!).
January 12, 2026
When you're serving up a storyline you've used over and over and over again it has to be perfect, and this sadly isn't. Cain was coasting on reputation by this point in his career and it shows. Femme Fatales are fine characters, lust and greed are fine motivators, but you can't just state your leads have the instant hots for each other, have the man propose the day they meet - seriously not just in a kidding way - and then a few chapters later have him propose to the girls mother they same day he meets her - the same day he realizes at last the truth in the old adage don't &%$# crazy. Especially when you're supposedly establishing him as the grounded, serious type. It's both ridiculous and off-putting. After that the story devolves into boring and unbelievable murders, unsexy sex scenes, a rather anticlimactic trial and a just but out of left field ending unsupported by the rest of the story.
February 17, 2012
Man falls for a woman. Turns out she's married and wants her husband out of the way - permanently. They come to an agreement. Things go wrong. In stark outline, this reads like a retread of Double Indemnity. It's a tribute to Cain's imagination and the depth of his vision of human nature that the novel turns out to be nothing of the kind. Even with the broad parallels that can't be avoided and a gloomy conclusion that goes with the noir tag, 'The Magician's Wife' is eminently worth being read for its own strengths.
December 9, 2007
Double Indemnity is one of my all-time favorite movies. This has the same elements--greed, lust, murder. In fact, this one would probably make a cracker-jack film, too. On the page, though, something doesn't quite work for me.
Clay Lockwood is a big-shot in the meat business. He meets Sally Gorsuch and before the day is out they're in the midst of a passionate affair and Clay is proposing that she leave her adulterous husband. But Sally has her eyes on the prize--when her father-in-law dies, her magician husband will inherit millions. Clay thinks Sally means to bring about this inheritence without waiting for nature to take his course...and her mother, Grace, has similar worries. Grace secretly meets with Clay to egg him on, hoping that if he can persuade Sally to leave her husband then murder can be avoided. And this is one of the weird-ish elements of the story--Clay propositions Grace, too. Trying to bag a daughter and her mom is just unsavory.
Clay thinks he has Sally convinced to divorce her husband. However, that very night her father-in-law dies--it looks like he choked on a peanut, but Clay is pretty sure that Sally smothered him. Her husband is pretty sure, too. He persuades the police to investigate, but nothing can be proved.
Sally's vengeful nature has been aroused, however. As far as she's concerned, her husband deserves to die for trying to rat her out to the cops. She and Clay plot to kill Alec in a not-so-accidental car accident.
Sally stays home and invites her mother and two other women over to serve as an alibi. Clay contrives a more circumstantial alibi for himself--conspicuously checking in with the switchboard operator at his apartment, arranging to have his car sent out for repairs, and making and receiving phone calls.
When he runs Alec off the road, he hears a female scream; Alec's magic assistant and lover was also in the car. Clay is first hit by guilt, thinking he has killed the girl, and then he's hit with panic when he reads in the paper that Buster not only isn't dead, she believes she saw the license number of the car that hit her.
Clay and Sally are finished; she doesn't intend to go down for murder and makes it clear that she'll throw Clay under the bus if it comes to that. Clay realizes that it's Grace he loves, and he quickly marries his lover's mom. He tells Grace everything, and she agrees to stand by him.
Clay keeps expecting the police at his door, but it turns out that the license number Buster thinks she saw was Sally's. But Sally's alibi holds up, and now nothing will satisfy her except seeing Buster convicted. Once the police discover that Alec had taken out a life insurance policy to benefit Buster, they come around to Sally's way of thinking.
Clay and Grace do everything they can to keep Buster from being convicted. First they pay for her lawyer, and then Clay agrees to testify; after all, he was waiting near the parking lot of the club where Alec and Buster did their magic act, and he overheard the final fight they had before the crash. He knows that she didn't, as one witness claimed, threaten to kill Alec. But the police have already checked out his "alibi" and are persuaded that he was at home, not at the club. Buster is convicted of manslaughter.
Clay decides he must confess. He types his confession and drops it in the mail. One final copy he takes with him to Sally's home. First he tells her that he's turning himself in, then he strangles her, and then he jumps to his death from the roof of the building.
Not bad, except for the love triangle. I couldn't figure out why he wanted to be with Sally in the first place, and once I had decided to just go with it, I couldn't figure out why he would go after her mom. I think in a movie this might work better. Maybe if Sally were played by a suitably scrumptious actress and with Grace played by a slightly older but still delicious woman his divided attention would make sense.
Clay Lockwood is a big-shot in the meat business. He meets Sally Gorsuch and before the day is out they're in the midst of a passionate affair and Clay is proposing that she leave her adulterous husband. But Sally has her eyes on the prize--when her father-in-law dies, her magician husband will inherit millions. Clay thinks Sally means to bring about this inheritence without waiting for nature to take his course...and her mother, Grace, has similar worries. Grace secretly meets with Clay to egg him on, hoping that if he can persuade Sally to leave her husband then murder can be avoided. And this is one of the weird-ish elements of the story--Clay propositions Grace, too. Trying to bag a daughter and her mom is just unsavory.
Clay thinks he has Sally convinced to divorce her husband. However, that very night her father-in-law dies--it looks like he choked on a peanut, but Clay is pretty sure that Sally smothered him. Her husband is pretty sure, too. He persuades the police to investigate, but nothing can be proved.
Sally's vengeful nature has been aroused, however. As far as she's concerned, her husband deserves to die for trying to rat her out to the cops. She and Clay plot to kill Alec in a not-so-accidental car accident.
Sally stays home and invites her mother and two other women over to serve as an alibi. Clay contrives a more circumstantial alibi for himself--conspicuously checking in with the switchboard operator at his apartment, arranging to have his car sent out for repairs, and making and receiving phone calls.
When he runs Alec off the road, he hears a female scream; Alec's magic assistant and lover was also in the car. Clay is first hit by guilt, thinking he has killed the girl, and then he's hit with panic when he reads in the paper that Buster not only isn't dead, she believes she saw the license number of the car that hit her.
Clay and Sally are finished; she doesn't intend to go down for murder and makes it clear that she'll throw Clay under the bus if it comes to that. Clay realizes that it's Grace he loves, and he quickly marries his lover's mom. He tells Grace everything, and she agrees to stand by him.
Clay keeps expecting the police at his door, but it turns out that the license number Buster thinks she saw was Sally's. But Sally's alibi holds up, and now nothing will satisfy her except seeing Buster convicted. Once the police discover that Alec had taken out a life insurance policy to benefit Buster, they come around to Sally's way of thinking.
Clay and Grace do everything they can to keep Buster from being convicted. First they pay for her lawyer, and then Clay agrees to testify; after all, he was waiting near the parking lot of the club where Alec and Buster did their magic act, and he overheard the final fight they had before the crash. He knows that she didn't, as one witness claimed, threaten to kill Alec. But the police have already checked out his "alibi" and are persuaded that he was at home, not at the club. Buster is convicted of manslaughter.
Clay decides he must confess. He types his confession and drops it in the mail. One final copy he takes with him to Sally's home. First he tells her that he's turning himself in, then he strangles her, and then he jumps to his death from the roof of the building.
Not bad, except for the love triangle. I couldn't figure out why he wanted to be with Sally in the first place, and once I had decided to just go with it, I couldn't figure out why he would go after her mom. I think in a movie this might work better. Maybe if Sally were played by a suitably scrumptious actress and with Grace played by a slightly older but still delicious woman his divided attention would make sense.
February 7, 2013
This noir mystery by the acclaimed novelist James Cain is intriguing, but not one of his best. A successful businessman becomes engaged in an illicit affair with a married woman. When it becomes apparent she wants him to kill her husband so she may inherit his money, he tries to break it off. The woman's mother enters the narrative, trying to get him to continue the affair. (Guess what her motivation is?) Of course, the businessman has an affair with the mother as well. The story plays out in a predictable pattern, with no big surprises. If you're a fan of classic mysteries, or a fan of James Cain, this is worth the read. If not, it might be better to choose one of Cain's earlier works to read, where his talent really shines.
April 6, 2023
I love James M. Cain's classic work, but this one lacks the sharpness of his earlier masterpieces.
September 8, 2024
This is no The Postman Always Rings Twice, or Double Indemnity, or even Mildred Pierce, but it is James M. Cain, so it is worth reading. I didn’t find any of the characters to be very sympathetic, and the ending was disappointing, although I’m not sure Cain could have wrapped it up much diffferently.
September 8, 2019
Didn't quite match up to other books I have read by Cain. I think the reason would be the main character. There is very little interesting or likable about him. Don't get me wrong, a character could be evil or nasty, but on one level or another there has to be an interesting draw. An example of my point would be Begby from Trainspotting (Porno too). The character is a terrible human being. But at least he is interesting. Anyway, without giving anything away, the last 15 or so pages almost redeem the book, especially the final paragraph. Read it for the ending alone.
January 13, 2013
OK, so I’m a guy who likes happy endings and gets tired of that old adage, ‘crime doesn’t pay’, but here we have the perfect set up for a happy ending but….it doesn’t happen.
Otherwise, this reads with the same suspense filled, touch of romance, flair of other James M. Cain novels – I am glad that Mysterious Press has reissued this – to me – obscure James M. Cain novel as an ebook, because although I may have been annoyed by the ending, I loved reading it!
Otherwise, this reads with the same suspense filled, touch of romance, flair of other James M. Cain novels – I am glad that Mysterious Press has reissued this – to me – obscure James M. Cain novel as an ebook, because although I may have been annoyed by the ending, I loved reading it!
February 12, 2013
I enjoyed this book and thought the plot was good. It really showed the depths that someone would go to in the name of love. In the end though the goodness that was in the fabric of his being came through to admit the wrong and try to make it right. But it still left me sad and disappointed at the end with how things turned out.But I guess life is not always full of happy endings! I will read more stories from this author as this was my first one.
October 10, 2018
C’est l’histoire d’un amour qui bouleversa la vie d’un ambitieux chef d’entreprise, l’enlaçant de telle sorte à le pousser à commettre l’inimaginable.. un désir fou.. et quelqu’un à tuer.. avec un dénouement tragique mais non moins surprenant !
La Femme du magicien est un roman poignant signé James M. Cain et traduit de l’américain à fine pointe d’excellence par Jacqueline LENCLUD.
La Femme du magicien est un roman poignant signé James M. Cain et traduit de l’américain à fine pointe d’excellence par Jacqueline LENCLUD.
October 10, 2015
James M Cain is compellingly readable. This was not one of his best novels, but it still had some enjoyable moments. I would say that this one is to be read only if you are a fan and would appreciate the work despite the literary stumble.
February 22, 2021
Published in 1965, later in his life, this is not one of Cain’s better books, paling in comparison to Double Indemnity, both with similar plots. Nonetheless, this was still a pretty good book, and an enjoyable read.
October 27, 2012
Written towards the end of Cain's life, it doesn't compare to his earlier novels. Extremely earnest and filled with histrionics.
March 10, 2022
This was a disappointment—reads more like bad 1930s pulp by a first-timer than 1960s crime noir from a veteran of the genre
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews