Blog Entry Three: Double Indemnity

In the novel written by James W. Cain, first published in 1935 and came to film noir in 1944, the main characters of the novel develop a more intense interaction with one another as the story order increases. I will assume to attempt to answer question No. 1. Most good Noir tales involve a detective who is able to solve the crime or uncover the truth. Discuss who in the novel assumes the role of the detective figure. What qualities does he possess that makes him suitable for the role of the hard-boiled detective?

It is of my opinion that there are two possible detective figures attributed in the story order of this novel Double Indemnity. First and foremost and throughout the novel, as if there had been any other than the trustworthy Keyes, the head of the Claims Department. He has a real sense for the insurance business and for sniffing out fraudulent claims and discovering the truth. As with the Nirdlinger case the police claimed suicide, but they couldn't prove it. And all along Keyes kept saying there was something more to it, that he couldn't prove it as yet but that he believed Phyllis Nirdlinger had something to do with murdering her husband for the accident policy claim money. He also reads modern psychology books to help himself to identify with why clients in his business do what they do. Keyes spends a lot of time investigating the claims that run through his office thoroughly.

After Walter Huff lay in the hospital bed after having been shot and he confesses to Keyes that he killed Nirdlinger, Keyes then explained the backstory of Beniamino Sachetti to Huff that Sachetti was the son of a doctor who ran a sanatorium and that Phyllis at that time was the head nurse at a time well before she knew Mr. Nirdlinger, and this is where Beniamino first met Phyllis while she worked for his father. That three children had died under her care of Pneumonia at the sanatorium and that Sachetti's father took the rap for that and soon lost his business and thereafter soon died. Then Beniamino took up with Miss Lola Nirdlinger and soon found out from her that her step-mother was non other than Phyllis Nirdlinger that she had married her father shortly after her own mother the late Mrs. Nirdlinger had died of Pneumonia while in concert with Phyllis at the Lake Arrowhead cabins a year earlier. What Sachetti found out was that the late Mrs. Nirdlinger was the executrix of one the three children that one of them was due to inherit a lot of property which left her as the next in line to inherit, after which leaves young Lola as next to inherit the property. Beniamino stopped seeing Lola without a reason and this after she had moved out of the house into her own apartment after her fathers death; and put his attention to Phyllis Nirdlinger and started pumping her fast and furiously for all the information he thought he might attain from her about any of these deaths so as to first clear his fathers name and then to help bring Phyllis to supposed justice as well as to protect Lola from becoming the next victim to die in the scandal of who was next in line to inheritance rites for the property left after her own mother's passing.

I see Keyes oversight to be a strength and fortitude to his character building in this story and his pursuant investigative endeavors make for a strong conclusion on his part in the story's ending, though I don't believe he should have let anybody get away with it...as for Beniamino, he was very encouraged with a possible outcome to clearing his fathers name and bearing witness to the truth, I can only hope he and Lola can work there differences out and compromise and still be friends.