The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett was published in the magazine Redbook in 1934. While Hammett never wrote a sequel in novel form, he went on to pen the stories for six Thin Man films, despite the literal "thin man" perishing in the only book.
ALLISON:
It’s
no use beating around the bush. I really liked this book. Really, really.
Outside of Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, this is the most entertaining reading
experience I’ve had in some time. I was trying to think of why I liked this
book so much, especially as there are things that I’ve come to expect in crime
novels that Hammett’s Thin Man doesn’t
address. For example, I wasn’t particularly challenged or inspired to figure
out the mystery—I took a wild guess that the murderer was Dorothy in the opening
pages and was contented not to think about it from there on out. Also, my heart
wasn’t tugged for the victim, she wasn’t built as a sympathetic character. And
I wasn’t worried for the health and fitness of our heroes, although this isn’t
Hammett’s fault. I had mistakenly assumed there were subsequent Nick and Nora
novels, assuring their safe passage through this one. There are not more books,
I’ve learned—only a series of Nick and Nora movies, also penned by Hammett. Nevertheless,
there wasn’t a tremendous amount of suspense or edge of my seat sitting.
What I’ve listed are
qualities that usually enhance a crime novel, but there are also typical
interferers in the genre, devices that turn my stomach, or irritate me. As a
critical feminist, I often struggle with the mores of masculine mysteries.
Especially (ESPECIALLY!!) when the victim is a pretty young woman. There’s too
much romanticization of women and violence in our media. Much to my chagrin, I
was not piqued, not even a little, by this crime novel written in the 1930’s. I
said to a coworker at the bookshop, “It’s the best kind of misogyny. The women
send it back in equal measure.” I exaggerate of course, (the women are
interesting, and certainly tough—the victim is killed because of her
association with crime, not other more passionate and clichéd reasons) but much
like the Ferrante novels, I didn’t worry about
feminism while I was reading. Which is rare. While everyone is calling the
Neapolitan novels triumphs of feminist literature, I find myself silently
commenting, “Or, they are just good.” Fully
comprehending the benefits of scrutinizing art and media for their commentary
on our cultural norms, I’m not chuckling that Ferrante’s books about a female
friendship are so transcendent that men (gasp! MEN!) stand at the bookstore counter thumbing through the pastel
soap opera covers. Likewise, I’m not aghast that Nora thinks dirty old men are
entertaining, enabling a casual yet potentially sinister chauvinism. Because The Thin Man is just good. It’s worth
saying, though that I find a crime
novel to be exceptional (and I find many, many crime novels thus) is quite a
bit less frustrating than the rest of the world’s surprise that a book about women
should be so fantastic.
None
of this is to say The Thin Man isn’t
political. One of the more startling characters in the novel is alcohol.
Everyone drinks, all the time. The lawyers, the brokers, the gangsters, and
even the cops. No one drinks more than Nick Charles, who despite downing a
drink for every new thought, is never drunk. The only drink Nick refuses is the
one offered by Guild, the police detective on the case. He abstains not because
he worries about the cop (the pair have shared a drink at other opportunities)
rather because of his experience with the quality of cops’ drink. The book was
published in 1934, the near the time Prohibition was repealed after thirteen dry
years. Late in the novel Nick says to Nora, “This excitement has put us behind on our drinking,” Drinking,
despite its criminality, is an obligation, like paperwork. The alcohol
consumption in The Thin Man is not sustainable.
That Nick remains so lucid throughout the novel, despite the drinking and being
shot in the gut within the first few pages, is a stretch. We forget his injury,
even as he engages in a few physical altercations. The stitches only pop in the
final reveal, as he tosses a punch at the murderer, reminding us that Nick has
been tussling baddies with a belly full of booze and a bullet wound! One would
think he’d have bled to death, his blood thinned to zero. The quantity drunk is
ridiculous, certainly lethal, but fictionally imbibing with such obsessive
punctuation can serve as a tipsy flip of the bird at the establishment.
So
Nick Charles is a tolerant man. Beyond his capacity for drink and pain, he is a
successful sleuth because he can endure people. In this way he reminds me of my
husband, who is not a private investigator, but a bartender. Todd rarely drinks
but he deals with drunks for a living, drunks who come to the bar every evening,
stay there all night, paying our rent, while considering Todd their best
friend. He might be. Or might just be working. You have to be pretty obnoxious,
or dangerous, for Todd to kick you out, but he’s not hesitant to put you in
your place or tell a joke at your expense. All the characters in The Thin Man are desperate to win Nick’s
favor, even as he claims he takes no sides. He’s everyone’s best friend, even
when they shoot him in the gut. This is not the typical PI trope. He may be
drunk, but he’s not a depressive or a wreck. He’s magnetic, the trouble, the
talk and inevitable slips of truth, gravitating to him like the most popular
kid in the room.
I liked this book a lot. I liked it’s cheerful, sometimes
silly tone punched with moments of chilling violence. I loved Nick’s bland
distrust of everyone besides his quick-witted and unflappable wife. The
dialogue is stunning, unmatched and somehow untimely—stylized but still relevant
to today-speak. The one littlest question that never found an answer is why
Nick started investigating in the first place. Curiosity would have brought him
only so far, unless I’m mistaken, he wasn’t hired by anyone in particular,
rather begged with by everyone specifically. Nick’s final monologue summarizing
the crime was a bit over the top, (the added parentheticals or details assumed
and proven through future investigations was particularly laughable) considering
the man hardly uttered more than three consecutive sentences. BUT, overall,
this book was true good fun, and I give it a whomping 2 out of 10 (1 being the highest) and am really
excited to sit down for a Thin Man
movie marathon in the coming weekend.
Wes:
The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett is an interesting detective story
that became a rage in the early 1930s as its sharp repartee was easily
translatable to the screen. The interesting relations between the main
characters, Nick Charles and his classy heiress-wife Nora, also surely became
infectious to the reading public as several of Hammett’s books were widely read
and subsequently translated to the screen. Probably the most popular was The Maltese Falcon, which surely went a
long way to making Humphrey Bogart a star. I heard that six “Thin Man” films
were made featuring Nick and Nora Charles and their dog, Asta, the latter
somehow transmogrified from a larger, more intimidating dog in the book to a
small scaredy-cat dog in the movies.
The book begins with Charles and his new wife vacationing
in New York where Charles, an ex-gumshoe, is accosted by a young woman he once
knew as a child when he was working as a detective. She was now looking for her
long-lost father, a former client of Charles’. He passes her to the father’s
lawyer and tries to move on but despite his best efforts to avoid it, he is
drawn more and more into the case of the missing father. The problems intensify
when people start dying and the papers mistakenly mention him as being on the
case, a fact which brings a thug to his bedside with a pistol pointed at his
gut. The thug lets one off when the cops suddenly show up and Charles is only
grazed (the thin man??) but now has some literal skin in the game. The cops
roust the thug and think Charles knows more than he does. Charles has to
cooperate and, to avoid a gun possession rap, he thereafter exercises some of
his old methods and contacts trying to work with the cops in solving the case.
The story is a real easy and quick read as it is almost
non-stop dialogue. Nick Charles continually has run-ins with a wide range of
interesting characters as he tries to find out why Julia Wolf and Arthur
Nunheim are killed and who the killer(s) are. He moves around the speakeasies
and invites a range of characters to his hotel suites as he and his wife wait
for the New Year celebration. We never actually see them as the New Year (1933)
never arrives before the end. It must have been quite a description if it had,
because they spend almost all their time drinking, drunk, or waking up after
noon with hangovers. To make a different New Year’s Day would have to be a day
when they didn’t drink – that would be a celebration, I guess. In any case he
solves the murders a day or two prior to the New Year and then decide to leave
for home – San Francisco – before the big day.
The
emphasis on booze in this book seems a clear intent to get prohibition
repealed. Nearly everyone is boozing it up and the stuff is supposed to be
illegal! The cops even are offered drinks and are offering up bottles out of
their bottom drawers down at the precinct. The book has some weird things that
in some cases are false leads and others seem a bit off – such as the long five
page piece on cannibalism that Nick gives to Dorothy’s brother when he makes an
off-the-cuff query on whether Nick knows anything about cannibals. After the
book was finished, I had to ask what was up with that? Maybe the author needed
some bulk to get to 200 pages – I can’t figure what else that section might
mean.
One of
the best quotes in the book was one that seemed very meaningful this month (October
2015) as one of our former leaders has been under the gun for truthfulness.
Charles put her dilemma very succinctly in his description of Mimi Jorgensen’s
stories:
‘The chief
thing,’ I (Nick) advised them (Lt. Guild and Nora), ‘is not to let her tire you
out. When you catch her in a lie, she admits it and gives you another lie to
take its place and, when you catch her in that one, admits it and gives you
still another, and so on. Most people – even women – get discouraged after you
caught them in the third or fourth straight lie and fall back on either the
truth or silence, but not Mimi. She keeps trying and you’ve got to be careful
or you’ll find yourself believing her, not because she seems to be telling the
truth, but simply because you’re tired of disbelieving her.’
Overall the story line moved forward quickly but I found
some of the clues that Nick uncovered did not follow too closely when reading
the wrap-up at the end when he discussed all the clues that led him to discover
who the killer was and where all the dead bodies were. I did not recall some of
the logic he came up with but the author must have had them covered since he
conceived the whole thing. I guess the thin man was really intended to be the
dead man in the grave with the fat man’s clothes. I am also still looking for
the meaning of “dromomania” and “earysipelas.” I have a large college
dictionary and neither of these obscure terms is defined. This was a good read
and I look forward to seeing the various movies when they show up on The Movie Channel. I rate this book as a
4 on my scale of 1-10 (1 as best).
