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Loading... The Thin Man (edition 1972)by Dashiell Hammett
Work detailsThe Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
Classic gum shoe 'whodunit' murder mystery. I definitely didn't guess this one, so the plot was fine. But, both the good guys and the bad guys in this book are pretty seedy who gamble, go to bars and drink all day. I don't mind a mystery with dark flawed characters, but there is very little background on any of the characters, so everyone comes across and self centered and slightly hedonistic. Hammett's mysteries started a whole new genre of books and movies, definitely making an impact - just not my type of book. (  ) jmoncton | Jun 3, 2013 |  "I want a drink, please." "Why don't you have some breakfast first?" "I don't know. It's too early for breakfast." The married couple Nick and Nora - and their dog - are traveling to New York to celebrate Christmas and New Year - Nick is a former detective and when they arrive they learn a murder have taken place. A young woman is shot and the main suspect is an inventor - professor Clyde Wynant - who had an affair with her and have now gone into hiding covering a secret invention. Unfortunately for Nick he's approached both by family members of Wynant, by the police and shot at by a mafia-guy - he's forced to take up the case to save his skin. During the investigation we meet a lot of eccentric characters and come to suspect them all at one point or another. Great guessing. I just love the hard-boiled atmosphere of the 30's New York mixed together with a swift and funny dialogue (the feeling of a good screwball-comedy) - there's no attempt at nuanced characters or revealing much of their inner life - it's just cruising along easily. And this must be a record cocktail-sipping novel. Every opportunity is used for mixing up a drink - going to evening parties and hanging out in bars to the early morning and then ordering take-away. Do they ever sleep? I don't think so. Too busy entertaining us. Nora said: "She's pretty." “If you like them like that." She grinned at me. "You got types?" "Only you, darling- lanky brunettes with wicked jaws." "And how about the red-head you wandered off with at the Quinns' last night?" "That's silly," I said. "She just wanted to show me some French etchings.” (  )2  ctpress | May 10, 2013 | Don't read Dashiell Hammett, or even the reviews of Dashiell Hammett's work, if you're particularly sensitive to misogyny, violence, and all that stuff. There's a good bit somewhere in the middle where Nora Charles tells her husband that she doesn't have the least understanding of anything people said or did while they were in a certain speakeasy, and trust me, I know the feeling. I love reading noir detective stories, though. There's just some amazing lines and even though they represent a world I don't like or understand, it's fun to try and hang on and actually figure out the mystery. I didn't get there with this one, but trying was fun -- and I did at least notice that a certain character was spoken of a lot, but never seen by anyone trustworthy (and I'm not sure I even trust the narrator, in books like this). All the usual pitfalls of noir fiction, and I prefer Raymond Chandler's work to Hammett's, but still, a fun read -- and a quick one, one you probably wouldn't want to put down. (  ) shanaqui | Apr 9, 2013 | I'm a big fan of the old Thin Man movies starring William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles. Bogie and Bacall may have been the king and queen of hardcore noir, but Powell and Loy made sleuthing fun. This book is more than just a Thin Man script. It's got racy and un-pc jokes that the 1930's censors would never have allowed, as well as a slightly different version of the plot. Biggest surprise: Asta is a GIRL dog! Overall, the book is a bit darker than the movie. And the plot does occasionally bog down from all the false leads, mostly supplied by the Wynant family. (That messed up bunch is sure to make you feel pretty good about your own family.) But you get to spend time with Nick and Nora, and that is fried gold. (  ) TeknoKat | Apr 3, 2013 | This is the first Hammett novel I've read. I don't know why I haven't made the effort to read such an iconic writer before, particularly as I am a long-time crime fiction reader and a fan of "classic" mysteries. It may be my first Hammett, but I'm pretty sure it won't be my last. I've just finished re-reading all of the novels of Dorothy L Sayers, who is without doubt my favourite writer of "Golden Age" mysteries. It was interesting to compare The Thin Man with Sayers' novels. It's certainly less literary and intellectual than much of Sayers' writing, but Hammett and Sayers share an ability to write witty and entertaining dialogue. They are both skilled at summoning up a strong sense of place and time and their plotting is clever. I love the banter between Nick and Nora and the way Hammett conveyed the strength of their relationship without needing to spell it out. I love the novel's elegant style and it's evocation of 1930s New York City. The mystery was strong enough to keep me interested and I didn't guess the culprit in advance of the big reveal. I was initially amazed at all of the references to alcohol consumption and became convinced that the novel would be but a pamphlet if all the references to drinking were removed. But I either stopped noticing it, or else the incidence of drinking decreased as the novel progressed. All in all, this was a very worthwhile read. Now I understand what the fuss about Hammett is actually all about. ( ) KimMR | Apr 2, 2013 | no reviews | add a review Is contained in
Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0679722637, Paperback)The Thin Man, Dashiell Hammett's classic tale of murder in Manhattan, became the popular movie series with William Powell and Myrna Loy, and both the movies and the novel continue to captivate new generations of fans.Nick and Nora Charles, accompanied by their schnauzer, Asta, are lounging in their suite at the Normandie in New York City for the Christmas holiday, enjoying the prerogatives of wealth: meals delivered at any hour, theater openings, taxi rides at dawn, rubbing elbows with the gangster element in speakeasies. They should be annoyingly affected, but they charm. Mad about each other, sardonic, observant, kind to those in need, and cool in a fight, Nick and Nora are graceful together, and their home life provides a sanctuary from the rough world of gangsters, hoodlums, and police investigations into which Nick is immediately plunged. A lawyer-friend asks Nick to help find a killer and reintroduces him to the family of Richard Wynant, a more-than-eccentric inventor who disappeared from society 10 years before. His former wife, the lush and manipulative Mimi, has remarried a European fortune hunter who turns out to be a vindictive former associate of her first husband and is bent on the ruin of Wynant's family fortune. Wynant's children, Dorothy and Gilbert, seem to have inherited the family aversion to straight talk. Dorothy, who has matured into a beautiful young woman, has a crush on Nick, and so, in a hero-worshipping way, does mama's boy Gilbert. Nick and Nora respond kindly to their neediness as Nick tries to make sense of misinformation, false identities, far-fetched alibis, and, at the center of the confusion, the mystery of The Thin Man, Richard Wynant. Is he mad? Is he a killer? Or is he really an eccentric inventor protecting his discovery from intellectual theft? The dialogue is spare, the locales lively, and Nick, the narrator, shows us the players as they are, while giving away little of his own thoughts. No one is telling the whole truth, but Nick remains mostly patient as he doggedly tries to backtrack the lies. Hammett's New York is a cross between Damon Runyon and Scott Fitzgerald--more glamorous than real, but compelling when visited in the company of these two charmers. The lives of the rich and famous don't get any better than this! --Barbara Schlieper (retrieved from Amazon Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:36:07 -0500) Nick Charles searches for a wealthy inventor who is the prime suspect in a New York City murder case. (summary from another edition) |
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