Turn-ons and Turn-offs in Current Home Entertainment Releases : Excellent Good Fair Poor : AUDIOCASSETTES

“The Postman Always Rings Twice” by James M. Cain. Read by Aidan Quinn. Abridged. Random House Audiobooks. Two cassettes. The abridger remains anonymous in this condensation (to a bit under three hours) of Cain’s 1934 book noir . Quinn, from “Desperately Seeking Susan,” does a creditable job as Cain’s laconic drifter, although the film images of John Garfield and Jack Nicholson haunt the work. A narrator (Robert O’Keefe) reads the connective tissue, but abridging so spare a narrative as Cain’s misses the accumulative and overwhelming atmosphere of eroticism and violence. Information: (212) 751-2600. 1/2