Mildred Pierce

Hard-boiled fare from one of the masters of noir.
Fed up with her philandering husband, long-suffering housewife Mildred Pierce turns him out, determined to make ends meet on her own. She takes a job as a waitress, much to the chagrin of her snooty, mean-spirited daughter Veda. With the help of two male business partners — who are equal parts savvy and sleaze — Mildred eventually launches a restaurant chain. Her work gradually becomes the center of her world, as does (in a far bleaker way) her relationship with Veda, who detests her mother for abandoning the father she dearly loved. Femme fatales are de rigueur in noir, and Cain (Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice) gives us a vicious vixen in Veda, who manipulates her mother — and anyone else, for that matter — to gain the wealth and status she craves.

Christine Williams, an English-American actress whose most memorable appearance may have been as Playboy‘s 1968 Playmate of the Year, reads with precision and punch, but her tone can be grating at times. The material may be partly to blame; both Mildred and Veda use sex as a weapon, a scandalous notion when the book came out in 1941, but not especially startling in an era of raunchy talk radio and reality TV. As a longtime fan of James Cain and fellow noir novelists Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, I found this hard-boiled fare worth a listen even if it’s not the blistering tale it once was.