James M. Cain, a prominent crime-fiction novelist in the 1920s and ’30s,  is enjoying a bit of a revival these days, thanks largely to the recent HBO miniseries based on his novel Mildred Pierce.

The interest in Cain and his writings may soon increase, as a previously unpublished novel, The Cocktail Waitress, of his has been discovered and will be published next year by Hard Case Crime. There may well be good reasons that this manuscript disappeared and was not published (meaning, poor quality), but then again the may well have been truly an accident and this novel a real addition to his list of accomplishments. We shall have to read it to find out.

Hard Case Crime publisher Charles Ardai is quoted in USA Today as considering the book to be an important find, as one might expect:

“For fans of the genre, The Cocktail Waitress is the Holy Grail. It’s like finding a lost manuscript by Hemingway or a lost score by Gershwin – that’s how big a deal this is,” said Charles Ardai, founder and editor of Hard Case Crime, a line of mystery novels published by Titan books, in a statement.

Cain was a very skilled writer, and his books are well worth reading; he was one of the masters and first purveyors of what has come to be called noir fiction, and several of his novels have been adapted into superb films such as Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice.

The treatment of morals and motives in his books, it is worth mentioning, is a good deal more sophisticated and, well, conservative than noir fiction is typically thought of having. In this way, Cain’s fiction includes a fascinating and relatively complex depiction and analysis of personal values. This may be a good part of what makes his writings so interesting and worth reading nearly a century after their composition.