Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man, published in 1933, four years after The Maltese Falcon, demonstrated Hammett’s expansion of and impact on the detective mystery genre. The author’s real-life experience as a Pinkerton Agency investigator provided him with a unique set of skills and experiences that provide gritty and true-to-life experiences of his characters.

It’s not every day that the disappearance of a quirky, skinny inventor, the greed of his associates and dysfunctional family all combine to collide with an “I’d prefer to stay retired and inebriated” private detective and his wealthy, attractive wife in New York City over the holidays but this is precisely what happens in Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man. Nick Charles is a former detective who quit his job to manage his wife Nora’s fortune, an endeavor not nearly as engaging or interesting as detective work. Dorothy Wynant is the young, attractive daughter of Clyde Wynant, the quirky inventor who is now missing and suspected of murdering his former assistant, Julia Wolf. Herbert Macauley, Wynant’s attorney, is an old acquaintance of Nicks, which will prove to be a complicating factor. Dorothy’s mother, Mimi, and brother, Gilbert, bring a dysfunctional wealthy family into perspective , the cast rounded out by police detective John Guild who recklessly, or perhaps intentionally, botches the case against the wealthy Wynant family. In this novel Dashiell Hammett emphasizes old-fashioned detective work to thwart a lying and greedy family, inept police work, and the influence that the wealthy have on our legal system.

This 1933 murder mystery defies the typical investigative pattern of a committed crime followed by a then winnowing of a large list of suspects, eventually pointing to the guilty party or parties. The Thin Man breaks convention by initially zeroing in on a single suspect, the missing Clyde Wynant. It seems that everyone is looking for Clyde for one reason or another, including Nick who has been asked by young Dorothy Wynant to help. Dorothy’s schoolgirl crush on Nick, a possible romantic past with her mother, Mimi, a blended ina persistent fog of alcohol initially desensitizes Nick from the real story of what is going on behind his back.

Nick describes first meeting Dorothy Wynant as “She was a small blonde, and whether you looked at her face or her body in powder-blue sports clothes, the results was satisfactory.” (Pg. 3). Nick, albeit his obvious attraction to Dorothy, declines her request over cocktails and suggests that she contact Clyde Wynant’s attorney, Herbert Macaulay. Little does Nick know that a murder has already been committed and this is just the start of an unpredictable journey of noteworthy characters, some shady, some greedy, and a few just incompetent.

I consider The Thin Man to be one of Hammett’s finests works. Contrary to most of his other books set in the Bay Area, The Thin Man takes place in New York City, adding an additional element of hard-edged, big city mystique. I would enthusiastically recommend this book to anyone interested in detective mystery. Although somewhat dated and sure to offend most everyone who reads it through todays more enlightened or “woke” lens, The Thin Man stands out as a classic of the genre.