The Thin Man in History in Vogue

Nov 11, 2016 QNPoohBear rated it liked it

Shelves: mystery

Retired Private Detective Nick Charles just wants to enjoy Christmas with his lovely wife Nora and their dog Asta in New York City. Charles can't relax and enjoy the season however, because he gets drawn into a mystery surrounding eccentric inventor Claude Wynant. It seems he's gone missing and his daughter, Dorothy, is looking for him, as is everyone else. When Wynant's secretary Julia is murdered, he becomes the chief suspect, but is still nowhere to be found. Wynant's ex-wife, daughter and la Retired Private Detective Nick Charles just wants to enjoy Christmas with his lovely wife Nora and their dog Asta in New York City. Charles can't relax and enjoy the season however, because he gets drawn into a mystery surrounding eccentric inventor Claude Wynant. It seems he's gone missing and his daughter, Dorothy, is looking for him, as is everyone else. When Wynant's secretary Julia is murdered, he becomes the chief suspect, but is still nowhere to be found. Wynant's ex-wife, daughter and lawyer all want Nick to come out of retirement to solve the mystery. Even the police put their faith in Nick. Will he take the case? Can he keep the crazy Wynant-Jorgensen family from killing each other and adding more murders to his plate?

This is my first foray into true detective fiction. I have seen the movies based on the book and loved them. There's nothing like a classic screwball comedy from the 30s. Nick and Nora are delightful and Asta is adorable. The basic plot outline of the movie follows the book fairly closely for a time before it departs. In the book there is also a lengthy and unnecessary passage on cannibalism that I felt compelled to skip over. The plot details of the book are a little darker than the movie. It's not gory but it involves child abuse (the child in question is 20 years old but hints at something that happened in her childhood), a dysfunctional family, adultery, alcohol, drugs and of course murder. Where the movie focuses more on Nick and Nora and is mostly a comedy with a mystery, the book is strictly a mystery with some comedy thrown in. There are some ethnic and racial slurs tossed around, giving way the fact the book was written decades ago rather than a recent historical fiction novel. That and the copious amounts of drinking the characters do. This book is set just before Prohibition ended but not even the cops seem to care.

It was hard to get used to the first-person narration from Nick's point-of-view. I usually read female point-of-view mysteries. For someone so involved in the case, Nick is rather hard boiled and matter of fact. He jokes around and makes some fabulously funny jokes but I felt a little detached from the action. He also solves the case randomly and quickly! I never guessed who did it and stayed up too late reading to find out-and I've seen the movie more than once!

I have mixed feelings about Nick and Nora here. They seem to be a well-matched couple. He doesn't take anything seriously and is fond of joking with his wife, like in this scene about her Christmas gift:
“I'll give you your Christmas present now if you'll give me mine."
I shook my head. "At breakfast."
"But it's Christmas now."
"Breakfast."
"Whatever you're giving me," she said, "I hope I don't like it."
"You'll have to keep them anyway, because the man at the Aquarium said he positively wouldn't take them back. He said they'd already bitten the tails off the...”

They trade quips but not as many as in the movie though I recognized some of the dialogue from the movie, which was taken from the book. Nick isn't quite a ladies' man but he's attractive enough to attract attention and clearly has a past. Nora seems to accept this without question. I can't tell if she is secure in Nick's love for her, doesn't care or is prepared to look the other way. She actually flirts a bit too and attracts her own admirers so I guess they are equal. She doesn't have a lot to do in the book. They're not detecting partners. She doesn't always wait around for him to come home and has a bit of sass so I guess she's OK for a woman of her time in a novel written by a man.

The only other character I liked a lot in the book was Asta. Here Asta is a female Schnauzer and not a male Wire Fox Terrier and she doesn't have a whole lot of action but is cute. Nick clearly loves his dog which is so nice to see. The criminals, Studsy and Morelli, provide some of the comic relief in the book. Studsy is especially funny.

I had a little bit of sympathy for Macaulay, the frazzles lawyer wondering what his client had done and where he was. I even had sympathy for Julia Wolf, who didn't exactly deserve to be murdered. The revelations about her made me feel less sorry for her.

The Wynant-Jorgensens are all nuts. Dorothy is insecure, whiny and crazy. I feel bad for her coming from a crazy family but not enough to like her. Her mother, Mimi Jorgensen, is downright sociopathic. Gilbert's hobbies are unusual to say the least and I'm not quite sure what to make of him, but he is one strange kid. Claude doesn't sound like much of a prize either. He hasn't spent any time with his family and then takes off without notifying anyone in the family. Jorgensen seems an odd match for Mimi because he's quiet and cold, not to mention everything else that goes on around the family.

Though this is different from the movie, it's worth a read, minus the part about cannibalism. I enjoyed it and now I want to see the movies again. (After the Thin Man is my favorite). ...more

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Jul 03, 2025 Preetam Chatterjee rated it it was amazing

Shelves: of-dashiell-hammett

The year was 1997. The December air had teeth, and I had just finished school, caught somewhere between boyhood’s retreat and college’s looming promise. I didn’t know it then, but something shifted that winter—not with a bang, but with a sly smirk, a cigarette lit with ironic detachment, and a line like:
"The problem with putting two and two together is that sometimes you get four, and sometimes you get twenty-two."

I had picked up The Thin Man mostly by chance. A slightly dog-eared paperback with The year was 1997. The December air had teeth, and I had just finished school, caught somewhere between boyhood’s retreat and college’s looming promise. I didn’t know it then, but something shifted that winter—not with a bang, but with a sly smirk, a cigarette lit with ironic detachment, and a line like:
"The problem with putting two and two together is that sometimes you get four, and sometimes you get twenty-two."

I had picked up The Thin Man mostly by chance. A slightly dog-eared paperback with a dusky blue spine and the kind of cover that promised adults with sharp tongues and darker secrets. I’d heard of Hammett vaguely—probably through a mention of The Maltese Falcon—but The Thin Man was my first dance with him. And oh, what a dance it was.

Nick and Nora Charles were nothing like the detectives I’d grown up on. They didn’t chase clues across rooftops or brood in rain-soaked alleys. They drank cocktails at 11 a.m., threw witty barbs like confetti, and solved murders almost as an afterthought. The whole thing had a tipsy elegance to it. The crime? Almost incidental. The vibe? Everything.

I still remember reading it curled up in a blanket, some cheap gas heater purring in the corner, my Walkman playing Ella Fitzgerald in the background. The city was quieter in the ’90s. Or maybe my world was. Either way, the rhythm of Hammett’s prose cut through the cold like a jazz riff—cool, detached, devastatingly stylish.

Nick Charles, once a private eye, now semi-retired and married to the delightfully rich and smarter-than-you Nora, stumbles into a murder mystery involving the disappearance of an eccentric inventor and a tangle of dysfunctional family dynamics. But the book never wallows in darkness. Instead, it sashays through cynicism with a smile. It’s noir without the trench coat—more cocktails than cigarettes, more banter than blood.

And yet, beneath all the sparkle, I sensed something hollow, even then. That was my first lesson in the genre: the glitter often hides the gut-punch. Nick drinks not because he’s always merry, but because he’s weary. Nora masks concern with sass. And everyone—everyone—is lying.

I didn't have the words for it in 1997, but rereading it now, I see what it was: an education. The Thin Man taught me that style could be substance, that dialogue could reveal everything while pretending to say nothing. It taught me that the line between love and loneliness is sometimes just one drink deep.

More importantly, it pulled me into the world of noir. After this, there was no going back. Chandler followed. Then Cain. Then Hammett again—Red Harvest, The Glass Key, The Maltese Falcon. But The Thin Man was the gateway drug, the one that wore a tux and made nihilism look like a garden party.

It’s odd, isn’t it, how some books become bookmarks in our lives? I didn’t know who I was yet in 1997. But I knew I liked the idea of solving mysteries with charm instead of violence, of facing the world's absurdity with wit instead of despair. Nick and Nora didn’t just solve a murder—they modeled a kind of relationship I’d never seen before: playful, fiercely loyal, irreverent but real.

Looking back, I realise Hammett’s The Thin Man didn’t just open a literary door—it taught me how to enter a room with a smile, a question, and maybe, just maybe, a drink in hand. ...more

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