[3] The novel served as the basis for the film of the same name in 1944, adapted for the screen by the novelist Raymond Chandler and directed by Billy Wilder, as well as numerous remakes in different forms.

In spite of his instinctual decency, and intrigued by the challenge of committing the perfect murder, Walter is seduced into helping the femme fatale do away with her husband for the insurance money.

Hospitalized, he confesses the plot to Barton Keyes, the company's claims manager, who arranges for him to escape justice by taking a steamship for Mexico.

In the autumn of 1934, shortly after the release of his first novel The Postman Always Rings Twice, Cain and wife Elina Tyszecka purchased a home in the Southern California city of Beverly Hills.

They assured him that “the big crime mysteries in this country are locked up in insurance company files.”[10] With a story and a dramatic element in mind, Cain informed his agent Edith Haggard that he would model the style of the serial on The Postman Always Rings Twice: It will be told almost in exactly the same style as my Postman book and, as a murder story, have the novelty that the insurance [investigator] who solves it never relies on any clues at all, in fact never even gets a clue.

His weapons are the big human factors that people always overlook when they try to pull something smart…[11]The novel was completed in late summer 1935 with the title Double Indemnity provided by Cain’s agent James Geller.

[12][13] When Haggard’s effort to sell the serial to Redbook failed, and book publisher Alfred A. Knopf showed no interest, Geller took manuscripts to several Hollywood studios, generating tremendous enthusiasm.

[19]To actor Fred MacMurray who plays Walter Huff [Walter Neff in the film version] Cain wrote: The way you found tragedy in his shallow, commonplace, smart-cracking skull will remain with me for a long time and, indeed, reinforce an aesthetic viewpoint that many quarrel with; for if I have any gift, it is to take such people and show that they can suffer as profoundly as anybody else…[20]The Screen Guild Theater twice adapted Double Indemnity as a radio drama.

A stage adaptation by David Pichette and R. Hamilton Wright, directed by Kurt Beattie, opened at ACT Theatre in Seattle on October 27, 2011.