The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

This book really disappointed. I was looking forward to some clever hard-boiled detective, like Hammett's Sam Spade or Continental Operative. What I got instead was ex-detective Nick Charles, who is medium-boiled, at best.

Nick Charles quit the detective game when he married the wealthy Nora, instead managing their (her) fortune and spending most days sleeping late, attending and hosting cocktail parties with the rich, going to all-night clubs, and coming home drunk in the wee hours. While on a trip to New York City he happens to meet up with the 20-year-old daughter of a former client, who of course needs his help. She just wants to find her father, whom she has not seen in many years.

Then her father's secretary is found dead, and the father cannot be located (although he keeps sending notes to people). It turns out that nobody has seen the father for several months, except, possibly, the secretary. Several suspects emerge, most notably the missing man and members of his dysfunctional family.


The Thin Man contains echoes of Hammett's razor-sharp dialogue, but it seems unnatural for a character who spends most days drinking and socializing with the wealthy. The suspects may be neurotic and slightly immoral, but they are not the street-smart toughs of Hammett's other books. Even the body count pales in comparison, and Nick is in danger only once, almost by accident. And the most disheartening element of all: I anticipated the ending about half-way through.

This was Hammett's last novel, even though he lived almost 25 more years. And it was first published, not as a "pulp mystery," but as a serial in Redbook, of all places (essentially a woman's magazine). This was in 1933 during the Depression, so maybe he really needed the money. No one knows, even those closest to him, why he never wrote another mystery.

The one aspect of this novel that stands out for me is the alcohol use. Nick and Nora have a drink or two, "to cut the phlegm," before breakfast. Every time anyone shows up, including the police, they all have drinks. They have drinks with lunch; they have cocktails in the afternoon, they have drinks with late suppers; they go out to late-night clubs and have many, many drinks. I have read that Hammett was an alcoholic. If he drank only half as much as the fictional Nick Charles, it is no surprise that he had a problem.

If you want to sample the origin of the hard-boiled detective story, read Red Harvest or The Maltese Falcon, not this one.