Jealous Woman

An ambitious Reno salesman. A wealthy would-be divorcée. An insurance policy. It’s a toxic combination in this noir thriller by an MWA Grand Master . . .

If Las Vegas is a city of lovers, in Reno, the business is divorce. Six weeks in Reno can erase the darkest marriages, and the only question is how to pass the time—craps or roulette? Jane Delavan is a roulette woman, a stately beauty from back East who is too classy for the motel where she’s shacked up. She’s come for a divorce, but her husband has other ideas. He wants an annulment, and in exchange offers to take out a $100,000 insurance policy on himself—just in case something happens to him before their paperwork goes through. Jane is cunning enough to make sure that if she wants something to happen, it will. Ed Horner is the insurance agent sent to settle the agreement, and it doesn’t take long for Jane to settle him. They fall in love over twenty-five-cent roulette and soon have a bigger score in mind. In the Biggest Little City in the World, a king-size scheme is brewing . . .

Praise for James M. Cain’s fiction

“Cleverly plotted.” —The New York Times

“Swift and absorbing.” —The Wall Street Journal