Book Review: The Cocktail Waitress

Joan Medford is desperate.  At only 21-years old, and a newly-widowed woman with a young son to raise in 1960s America, she doesn’t have a lot of options.  So Joan leaves the toddler to stay with her wealthy, scheming, barren sister-in-law, while she gets back on her feet.  This means taking a job as a cocktail waitress in a restaurant down the street.  She accepts the job’s shortcomings – the skimpy attire, the seedy customers, and the ugly underbelly of what some girls do to make a living – because she needs the money.  Luckily, she has the assets – a quick tongue, a nice figure, and enough moral flexibility – to bring home the bacon.  Before long she’s back on her feet and doing better than ever; definitely better than when her deadbeat, drunken husband was still alive.  Now if only she could get these pesky detectives off her case, who refuse to let the odd circumstances of the accidental death of Mr. Medford go with him to the grave.

At the bar, Joan attracts the attention of two men: the older, richer, sickly Earl White III, and the younger, poorer, slicker Tom Barclay.  While White gives her everything a woman needs, Barclay gives her everything a woman wants.  Torn between the two men and the two sides of herself, Joan must decide which is more important.  Unless she can find a way to have her cake and eat it too, of course.

The Cocktail Waitress is the last book of James M. Cain, author of classic noir novels such as Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, and The Postman Always Rings Twice, among many others.  Although he was at his peak in the 1930s and 40s, Cain continued to have new books published up until and even after his death in 1977.  However, The Cocktail Waitress is a special case, in that it was an unfinished manuscript that lay around in various stages of completion, until editor Charles Ardai, a mystery writer with an impressive bibliography of his own, brought the pieces together and tried to mold them into a cohesive story.  And I’d say he succeeds.

The highlight of the book is definitely Joan.  You see, she’s not a very nice girl, and she has no problem admitting that.  Joan knows how to use her body and her hot temper to get what she wants out of men, yet she does it with a style that keeps her from becoming a caricature.  You may not always agree with the decisions Joan makes, but you understand where she’s coming from, and have to honestly ask yourself if you wouldn’t do the same in her position.

What I found most interesting about her is that she seems to be hiding something, even from us.  The book is told entirely from her perspective in her own words, and yet there are events, especially towards the end, where you can’t help but feel she’s left out a few details.  It’s always fun to have an unreliable narrator, but it’s even better when you don’t mind that they’re pulling one over on you.

That’s not to say the story isn’t a highlight, but it’s also not really the glue that holds the whole thing together, either.  It’s an odd plot to be sure – not quite a mystery, though there is a bit of a whodunnit involved late in the game- and yet not exactly a rip-roaring, edge-of-your-seat thriller, despite the presence of a Cold War spy-level bit of intrigue early on.  In between, the tale meanders, as we watch Joan handle mundane tasks like buying furniture, paying her electric bill, and visiting her son.  But we also see her in brief moments of cunning and heartless acts that will make you cringe and root for her at the same time.

As Ardai mentions in the afterword, there were many different versions of The Cocktail Waitress in existence.  Some were completed manuscripts, some were a dozen or so pages that were rewritten, some were single lines of dialog or notes scribbled on the page.  There is definitely a sense that Cain was trying things out, maybe going down a path and seeing where it led, only to change his mind and go down a different path in a different draft.  Still, Ardai has done a commendable job making it work and giving us a satisfying conclusion (as much as Joan will give us anyway), while still leaving us with the sense that the book was left unfinished by the author.

The Cocktail Waitress is a strangely enjoyable glimpse into the sometimes-seedy life of a woman willing to do almost anything to get ahead in this world.  Don’t go in looking for clues or trying to find a suspect, because there’s really nothing to figure out.  Just be like one of Joan’s customers and sit down, order a whiskey, chat her up a little bit, and watch as her world passes you by.  And leave a good tip for the entertainment provided.

The Cocktail Waitress from Hardcase Crime is available on Amazon.com, BN.com, and at your local bookstore.