false 80616 25 <I>The Thin Man</I>, Dashiell Hammett's classic tale of murder in Manhattan, became the popular movie series with William Powell and Myrna Loy, and both the movies and the novel continue to captivate new generations of fans. <p> Nick and Nora Charles, accompanied by their schnauzer, Asta, are lounging in their suite at the Normandie in New York City for the Christmas holiday, enjoying the prerogatives of wealth: meals delivered at any hour, theater openings, taxi rides at dawn, rubbing elbows with the gangster element in speakeasies. They should be annoyingly affected, but they charm. Mad about each other, sardonic, observant, kind to those in need, and cool in a fight, Nick and Nora are graceful together, and their home life provides a sanctuary from the rough world of gangsters, hoodlums, and police investigations into which Nick is immediately plunged. <p> A lawyer-friend asks Nick to help find a killer and reintroduces him to the family of Richard Wynant, a more-than-eccentric inventor who disappeared from society 10 years before. His former wife, the lush and manipulative Mimi, has remarried a European fortune hunter who turns out to be a vindictive former associate of her first husband and is bent on the ruin of Wynant's family fortune. Wynant's children, Dorothy and Gilbert, seem to have inherited the family aversion to straight talk. Dorothy, who has matured into a beautiful young woman, has a crush on Nick, and so, in a hero-worshipping way, does mama's boy Gilbert. Nick and Nora respond kindly to their neediness as Nick tries to make sense of misinformation, false identities, far-fetched alibis, and, at the center of the confusion, the mystery of <I>The Thin Man</I>, Richard Wynant. Is he mad? Is he a killer? Or is he really an eccentric inventor protecting his discovery from intellectual theft? <p> The dialogue is spare, the locales lively, and Nick, the narrator, shows us the players as they are, while giving away little of his own thoughts. No one is telling the whole truth, but Nick remains mostly patient as he doggedly tries to backtrack the lies. Hammett's New York is a cross between Damon Runyon and Scott Fitzgerald--more glamorous than real, but compelling when visited in the company of these two charmers. The lives of the rich and famous don't get any better than this! <I>--Barbara Schlieper</I> 1336952 book 1934 The Thin Man total:2349|5:681|4:1013|3:546|2:99|1:10| 2349 9303 3172 248 80616 0679722637 9780679722632 2263 231 3.96 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170984506m/80616.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/80616.The_Thin_Man 4 2 false Sun Sep 28 23:26:22 -0700 2008 Sun Sep 28 23:42:03 -0700 2008
"The Thin Man" was read as an attempt to get into the mindset of noir, since a friend of mine is asking me to write him ...more...]]> 80616 0679722637 9780679722632 2263 231 3.96 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170984506m/80616.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/80616.The_Thin_Man 5 2 false Tue Oct 09 10:29:37 -0700 2007 Wed Oct 10 14:11:13 -0700 2007
...more...]]> 80616 0679722637 9780679722632 2263 231 3.96 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170984506m/80616.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/80616.The_Thin_Man 5 2 false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue Sep 11 06:37:17 -0700 2007 Tue Sep 11 07:42:22 -0700 2007
The Thin Man is the last novel Hammett completed (though he st...more...]]> 80616 0679722637 9780679722632 2263 231 3.96 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170984506m/80616.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/80616.The_Thin_Man 3 1 false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Jan 01 16:33:55 -0800 2008 Sun Jan 13 10:47:08 -0800 2008 more...]]> 80616 0679722637 9780679722632 2263 231 3.96 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170984506m/80616.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/80616.The_Thin_Man 3 1 false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Sun Dec 16 17:55:53 -0800 2007 Mon Jan 07 02:40:23 -0800 2008 more...]]> 80616 0679722637 9780679722632 2263 231 3.96 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170984506m/80616.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/80616.The_Thin_Man 3 1 false Sun Jan 11 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sat Jan 03 19:20:50 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 12 18:09:44 -0800 2009 more...]]> 80616 0679722637 9780679722632 2263 231 3.96 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170984506m/80616.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/80616.The_Thin_Man 2 0 false Mon Mar 09 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Mar 25 21:38:25 -0700 2009 Wed Mar 25 21:56:57 -0700 2009 more...]]> 80616 0679722637 9780679722632 2263 231 3.96 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170984506m/80616.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/80616.The_Thin_Man 5 0 false Mon Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Mar 31 07:36:39 -0700 2009 Tue Mar 31 07:46:40 -0700 2009 "We didn't come to New York to stay sober."
(p. 153)

A great book, full of smooth-talking guys and dangerous dames. Nick and Nora Charles, a rich socialite and her ex-detective husband, get sucked into investigating the murder o...more...]]> 80616 0679722637 9780679722632 2263 231 3.96 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170984506m/80616.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/80616.The_Thin_Man 2 1 false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Wed Sep 12 06:38:53 -0700 2007 Wed Sep 12 06:38:53 -0700 2007 more...]]> 80616 0679722637 9780679722632 2263 231 3.96 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170984506m/80616.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/80616.The_Thin_Man 3 2 false Fri Jul 10 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 21 06:19:19 -0700 2008 Sat Sep 05 12:09:42 -0700 2009 1 more...]]> 80616 0679722637 9780679722632 2263 231 3.96 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170984506m/80616.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/80616.The_Thin_Man 4 0 false Mon Jan 19 03:45:08 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 19 03:53:43 -0800 2009 more...]]> 80616 0679722637 9780679722632 2263 231 3.96 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170984506m/80616.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/80616.The_Thin_Man 4 1 false Wed Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2003 Tue Jan 08 14:33:47 -0800 2008 Tue Jan 08 14:35:59 -0800 2008 more...]]> 80616 0679722637 9780679722632 2263 231 3.96 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170984506m/80616.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/80616.The_Thin_Man 3 0 false Tue Aug 18 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Aug 18 08:49:33 -0700 2009 Tue Aug 18 08:56:01 -0700 2009 Maltese Falcon, mostly because I just find Nick and Nora Charles to be far more engaging leads than Sam Spade, and the entire Wynant/Jorgenson family was quite the delicious mess. The actual mystery isn't really all that more compelling, but the cast seems a reasonable basis for...more...]]> 80616 0679722637 9780679722632 2263 231 3.96 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170984506m/80616.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/80616.The_Thin_Man 4 0 false Wed Jul 29 19:20:10 -0700 2009 Tue Aug 04 15:35:31 -0700 2009 more...]]> 80616 0679722637 9780679722632 2263 231 3.96 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170984506m/80616.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/80616.The_Thin_Man 4 0 false Mon Apr 20 22:26:32 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 20 22:31:47 -0700 2009 more...]]> 80616 0679722637 9780679722632 2263 231 3.96 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170984506m/80616.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/80616.The_Thin_Man 4 0 false Wed Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 22 13:44:15 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 06 19:55:39 -0700 2009 more...]]> 80616 0679722637 9780679722632 2263 231 3.96 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170984506m/80616.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/80616.The_Thin_Man 5 0 false Wed Mar 11 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 08 11:46:39 -0700 2009 Thu Mar 12 08:59:30 -0700 2009 more...]]> 1347301 0394717740 9780394717746 46 10 3.96 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182899480m/1347301.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1347301.The_Thin_Man 4 0 false Wed May 20 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon May 18 04:20:20 -0700 2009 Wed May 20 06:08:01 -0700 2009 more...]]> 643984 014102724X 9780141027241 14 4 3.96 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1176679034m/643984.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/643984.The_Thin_Man 3 0 false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Thu Nov 12 04:51:22 -0800 2009 Thu Nov 12 04:51:33 -0800 2009 more...]]> 80616 0679722637 9780679722632 2263 231 3.96 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170984506m/80616.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/80616.The_Thin_Man 5 0 false Fri Jan 09 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Jan 06 15:51:45 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 09 15:48:13 -0800 2009 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=952550