Blog # 3 "Double Indemnity"

WOW, is all that I have to say about the ending to this novel. At first I had a feeling that Phyllis was somehow going to try and kill Walter but did not expect to find out how many other people she had killed previously to the murder of Mr. Nirdlinger. The ending of this gave me chills, and creep-ed me out it was not what I expected at all. I didn’t think there was going to be so much going on. One minute I’m thinking it was definitely Phyllis trying to kill Walter but then Lola and Sachetti come into play and now I’m thinking it’s them. I think that Keyes played a major role in this and I had my mind set that he was the detective the whole time, because he had guessed the entire murder and was trying to figure out who did it. Then when he started talking about all the other murders that Phyllis did, and how Sachetti was friends with her the whole time because he was trying to find out that she was the one who murdered his father and three children. That’s when I changed my mind; Sachetti plays the role of the detective in this novel. He had to become close with Phyllis so that he could try and get her to spill the beans about what she had done. “Sachetti elected himself a one-man detective agency to find out what it was all about (106)”. In order for Sachetti to figure out that Phyllis did it he had to become close with her, very close and that’s what a detective does. A detective is sneaky and slick and finds a way to get information with out the assassin finding out.

The ending to this left me a little confused, and I had to go back and read it again. At first I didn’t like how the ending played out, if left me wanting more details. But now that I think about it, that’s how Phyllis and Walter should have died. They committed suicide in shark infested waters meaning they died miserably, and as they should have. One thing that also made me happy was to hear that Lola and Sachetti got married. They have both been through so much trauma in there lives that they can both relate to each other and move forward with their lives. This book left me wanting to read a part 2 just so I could find out if the case would have been solved and for Keyes to get the satisfaction that he was right all along.  

Double Indemnity is a great example of Film Noir, with it being a dark and gloomy underworld of violent crime and corruption. Not only there being one main murder but we find out that the femme fatal “Phyllis” had murdered multiple people. She is a gorgeous woman with a deceitful and manipulative personality, as Keyes describes her as “pathological”. Even though this novel seemed a little fast-pasted at time, it kept my anxiety high and wanting me to read more and more.