Cain X 3 is a collection of three previously published novels by James M. Cain, reissued in 1969 by Alfred A. Knopf, with an introduction by Tom Wolfe. Cain’s literary oeuvre had drifted into obscurity by the late 1960s, and as a novelist he was at his nadir. When renewed interest in the “ hard-boiled fiction of the 1930s by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler drew attention to Cain’s contributions to the genre.