The Thin Man (Vintage crime/Black Lizard) (Penguin crime fiction) (Pocket Penguin Classics)

by Dashiell Hammett

The last novel from the unsurpassed master of American detective fiction, Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man is a genre-defining mystery novel, published in Penguin Modern Classics.

Ex-detective Nick Charles plans to spend a quiet Christmas holed up in a hotel suite with his glamorous wife Nora, their pet Schnauzer and a case of good Scotch. But then a bullet-riddled corpse and a missing inventor (not to mention the attentions of a beautiful young woman) force him out of retirement and back into business. Trying to make sense of false leads, suspicious alibis and mistaken identities, Nick and Nora are thrown into a world of gangsters, hoodlums and speakeasies, where no-one can be trusted. Dashiell Hammett was credited with inventing the hardboiled crime novel, and this story of murder and mayhem in Manhattan, with its breakneck plot, snappy dialogue - and the hard-drinking, wisecracking couple Nick and Nora - is one of his most thrillingly enjoyable mysteries.

Dashiel Samuel Hammett (1894-1961) was born on a farm in southern Maryland, and grew up in Philadelphia and Baltimore. He left school at the age of fourteen, and after various jobs became an operative for Pinkerton's Detective Agency. The First World War intervened, and Hammett soon turned to writing, becoming, during the 1920s, the unquestioned master of detective-story fiction in America. The Maltese Falcon (1930), The Thin Man (1932) and The Glass Key (1931) are among his most famous novels.

If you enjoyed The Thin Man, you might like Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep and Other Novels, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.

'The ace performer'
Raymond Chandler, author of The Big Sleep

'The exuberance of language, the relish with which seediness is described ... it's a pleasure to imagine Hammett cutting loose with whatever rascally high jinks he could cook up'
Margaret Atwood, author of The Blind Assassin

• ISBN10: 014119460X
• ISBN13: 9780141194608
• Publish Date: 24 February 2011 (first published 1 January 1934)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• Imprint: Penguin Classics
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 240
• Language: English

Reviews

[wyvernfriend]

Once an investigator ... always an investigator.  Nick thought he had left all that investigation stuff behind him but it keeps chasing him down and insisting he gets involved, sometimes at the wrong end of a gun.
 
Oh man they put away a lot of booze.  I remember this from the film (and now I want to watch it again) This book is well-served by the film and in fact the snappy dialogue reads like it should be a film script.
 
Nick and Nora Charles are spending their Christmas and New Year in New York and are pulled into a missing man mystery where Nick knew the man back when he was a detective and he is reluctant to leave his luxurious life behind to get caught up in shenanigans.
 
Oh man, the liver damage if you sipped a drink every time a drink is mentioned.  They spend their day well-pickled.
 
I liked it, honestly preferred the movie but it was a fun read.
 
It falls into the Classic Noir and Murder most Foul squares but I'm going to use Classic Noir for this one.

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

Drinking, flirting and murder. Former detective Nick Charles is a cynical but overall decent man, his with wife, Nora, a clever woman who almost forces Nick into this case. This classic hard-boiled novel isn’t the strongest Dashiell Hammett offering but has a sense of making fun of the genre.