Reviewed by TONY BAER:

   

O. G. BENSON – Cain’s Woman. PI Max Raven #1. Dell First Edition A200, paperback original; 1st printing, 1960. Perennial Library, paperback, 1985, as Cain’s Wife.

   So I figured there’s gotta be something biblical with the Cain’s Woman thing, right? From what I can tell by googling, it looks like the biblical Cain married his twin sister. If you google ‘Cain’s Wife’, the first thing that comes up is a Wikipedia (yes, know—Wikipedia isn’t reliable; at the same time, I’m not in the mood to do serious research at on this and the results confirm my confirmation bias) entry that says:

   “According to the Book of Jubilees, Awan (also Avan or Aven, from Hebrew אָוֶן aven “vice”, “iniquity”, “potency”) was the wife and sister of Cain and the daughter of Adam and Eve.”

   So, there’s that.

   Mrs. Cain doesn’t disappoint. Vice, iniquity, potency? She’s got ’em.

   And she comes to call on our lonely detective in his lonely beat down office, wanting his help.

   The detective is Max Raven. And he’s everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be, to coin a phrase. Except for the well-dressed part.

   Mrs. Cain says she’s being blackmailed as a result of some naughty candid pictures her ex-fiancé took of her. Mr. Cain is very old and very rich and proper. And it wouldn’t do at all for him to see these photos. Would Raven please please please fetch them for her.

   And he does.

   But things aren’t what they appear to be, and Mrs. Cain is both far more and far less than she appears. She plays Raven like a fiddle, and gives him fits, til he’s fit to be tied, like sudden death. And like sudden death, it comes. Suddenly.

   The book is quite good, Raven is likable, Mrs. Cain is femme-fatale-able. Til the end, which is far too fallible for a femme fatale to be.

   That is to say, O.G. Benson plays nary a note wrong. Until the end. When his femme-fatale does something that no femme-fatale can do, nor has ever done. It’s a fatale flaw. It takes a tale that was just a step away from being as good or better than Charles Williams’s Touch of Death and ruins it. At the very last second. Like gluing a hallmark card onto Munch’s The Scream. I screamed.

   Or what’s worse. I didn’t.

   A more favorable review here: https://vinpulp.blogspot.com/2008/02/cains-woman-by-o-g-benson.html