Gumshoe America: Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction and the Rise and Fall of New Deal Liberalism.(Review) (book review)

Gumshoe America: Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction and the Rise and Fall of New Deal Liberalism, by Sean McCann. Duke University Press, 370 pages $19.95.

During the Great Depression, people got passionate about insurance. In Billy Wilder's film version of James M. Cain's 1936 novel Double Indemnity, for instance, an insurance sales call turns into a steamy and dangerous liaison. Barbara Stanwyck stands at the top of the stairs, dressed only in a towel. Below, Fred MacMurray is trying to convince her to buy auto insurance from the Pacific All-Risk Insurance Company. "The insurance ...