The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

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).