The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 12 April 2013
by Dashiell Hammett
One would think that a magician would make a good criminal. The art of stage magic is the art of misdirection. You're paying attention to the card shuffle while you miss entirely the ace sliding up the sleeve. There probably are mystery novels out there that take this more literally, some Las Vegas showman murderer. Dashiell Hammett, at one time a Pinkerton agent, knows whereof he writes in this tidy mystery novel. Nick Charles is already retired from detective work, having married money and slid into comfortable drunken dissipation. It is the holiday season, and Nick and Nora, along with their schnauzer Asta, have come to New York to celebrate with parties and a considerable amount of drinking. Hardly a page goes by in which Nick isn't drinking or getting ready for a drink. In our day and age, he'd be considered a serious alcoholic. But none of this prevents him from being a shrewd observer of human behavior and a subtle detective. And so, the thin man in question, Clyde Wynant has gone missing. His ex-wife and his kids would like to find him. But his secretary and maybe mistress turns up with four bullets in her, and he is immediately suspected of the killing. Nick, who knows this thoroughly unlikable family from a previous case, insists he isn't available to solve the mystery of Wynant's absence and the identity of the murderer. But he gets drawn in. Through numerous conversations with characters both comfortable and shady, Nick wades through the case, and the holidays, destined, of course, to figure out what is really going on. The book has a seedy quality. It does one well to imagine the time and the place. It doesn't hurt to have seen the famous movie that was made from this story, but don't read this too soon after a viewing. The book is witty and entertaining. The mystery is suitably complicated. It is a classic from one of the genre's early greats.
This book was followed just months later by a film of the same name that launched a popular franchise for Myrna Loy, William Powell and Asta the dog. The plot of the film differs in some small ways, and makes Nora a bit stronger, Asta into a male terrier, but Nick no less of a lush. And, while the Thin Man moniker came to be associated with Powell's Nick Charles, it refers to a different character altogether in this novel.