The Thin Man

The Thin Man (1934) is a detective novel by Dashiell Hammett, originally published in a condensed version in the December 1933 issue of Redbook. It appeared in book form the following month. A film series followed, featuring the main characters Nick and Nora Charles, and Hammett was hired to provide scripts for the first two. Plot The story is set in New York City during the Christmas season of 1932, in the last days of Prohibition in the United States. The main characters are Nick Charles, a former private detective, and Nora, his socialite wife. Nick, the son of a Greek immigrant, now spends most of his time in San Francisco managing his late father-in-law's businesses in between heavy drinking sessions. While in a New York speakeasy, Charles meets Dorothy, the now grown-up daughter of a former client, Clyde Wynant, who says she is trying to contact the father she has not seen since his divorce. Two days later, Nick sees a newspaper report of the shooting of Wynant's secretary (and one-time mistress), Julia Wolf. The body was discovered by Wynant's former wife Mimi, now married to the younger Christian Jorgenson, a gigolo close to deserting her after they have run through her substantial divorce settlement. The murder case is being led by Lieutenant John Guild, who suspects Julia's murderer was her new lover, the gangster Shep Morelli. That night Morelli breaks into Nick's hotel suite to insist that he was not the killer; however, he is spotted by the police, who now break in. Nick has time to knock Nora out of the way and distract Morelli enough so that he is only slightly wounded before the crook is arrested. Guild recognises Nick from a decade before, when Guild was a rookie and Nick a respected member of a Manhattan detective agency. Guild would like Nick to help with his investigations, especially in helping locate Wynant, who is supposedly developing a new invention in a secret location. Though Nick is reluctant, he is further drawn into the affair by his former army buddy Herbert Macaulay, who is Wynant's attorney and says he has orders to get money to him via the inventor's secretary. Nick learns more about Julia Wolf while drinking at a low-life speakeasy called the Pigiron. Its proprietor, a safe-cracker named Sudsy Burke arrested by Nick years before, tells him that Julia had been seen drinking there with a former burglar, Arthur Nunheim.