Dashiell Hammett - The Thin Man

It is New York, Christmas ,1932. Prohibition is almost over and so most people are drinking quite heavily. There is a lot of cigarette smoke, quite a few late night parties, many visits to not very pleasant speakeasys and murder hangs over the whole town. Nick Charles is in town with his wife Nora. Nick is a former detective. Now he looks after his father in law's businesses and is doing very well for himself. His wife Nora is a socialite who drifts between parties and is wary of her husband's drinking. Neither of them get up early.

While hanging about drinking in a speakeasy Nick is approached by Dorothy Wynan. She's the daughter of a former client of Nick's called Clyde. Clyde hasn't been seen in a long time and Dorothy is worried. She's also flirtatious. Everyone is flirtatious, and one of the entertaining things about Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man is the banter and flitrtation between Nora and Nick. "How about that red-head you wandered off with at the Quinn's last night" she asks him early on in the novel. "She just wanted to show me some French etchings" answers Nick.

Once Clyde's former secretary and mistress, Julia Wolf, is found dead, the plot gets going. Nick finds himself surrounded by a mystery that he has no interest in being part of. Nora is fascinated and he somewhat enjoys himself by showing her the detective ropes. He is further drawn in by being shot at by a gangster who was Julia's lover, and flirted at by Mimi, Clyde's former wife who is now down on her luck as her cash is running out. The police are keen for Nick to be involved and, to make it even more complicated, Clyde's lawyer is a former comrade of Nick's from the army. He's a hopeless shot - Nick saved his life at least once.

Like all decent detective stories, and Hammett's in particular there is a complex plot which throws in loose ends and new characters every few pages. At various points in the novel I suspected every single one of the people above to be guilty, including Nora (for no apparent reason). Classically there's also a thin line between state investigation and private detectives. The cops simply take Nick along with them to key investigations. 

The Thin Man was Hammett's last novel. Its themes are the hypocrisy and drunkenness of America in the 1920s and 1930s and the lazy, wasteful lives of a section of the monied classes. Few of the characters are working. Fewer still get up before 8am or are in bed before midnight. Its a dark, seedy world. Hammett would develop the characters into a series of films. Though some of the scripts remained unfilmed, The Thin Man is dedicated to Lillian Hellman, the blacklisted playwright whom Hammett was romantically linked to for many years. 

The Thin Man's conclusion is not particularly surprising, though its executed with typical flair. But the novel itself feels darker and deeper than many others of its genre. A classic.

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