The Thin Man

The Thin Man is a detective novel by the American writer Dashiell Hammett, published in 1934 after an initial condensed serialization in Redbook magazine in late 1933. It follows Nick Charles, a former private detective who has retired into married life with his wealthy wife Nora, as the couple is drawn into investigating the disappearance of an eccentric inventor, Clyde Wynant, and the murder of his secretary, moving through Prohibition-era New York's hotel bars and society parties as Nick works out who among Wynant's circle is responsible. Unlike Hammett's earlier, harder-edged detective fiction, the novel is told in a light, comic register built around Nick and Nora's bantering marriage rather than the violence and moral bleakness typical of his other work. It was Hammett's final completed novel and, published within months of a successful film adaptation, gave rise to a long-running film series built around Nick and Nora as a detective couple.