The Thin Man

Daschell Hammet established the hard-boiled detective as a fixture in the American imagination. The Thin Man, together with The Maltese Falcon, stands out as representative of Hammet’s novels (originally printed in serial format) and remains an exemplar of the mystery / thriller genre.

The “noire” aspects are surprisingly unsurprising – or perhaps, unsurprisingly so considering how thoroughly the motif has imbedded itself in our popular consciousness. Hammet’s New York is all posh hotel apartments and speak-easies peopled with crusty coppers, sad-sack snitches and leisure-rich lushes. His protagonist Nick Charles married wealth and retired early from the sleuthing racket. He plays the markets with his young wife’s money and routinely requests a cocktail with his breakfast, “just a little something to cut the phlegm.” All nearly too commonplace to capture any attention.

But let not familiarity breed contempt. The Thin Man displays the kind of power and artistry that characterizes the rich beginnings of genre fiction. Hammet begins the narrative in medias res and ends just as abruptly. As the mystery unfolds, the laconic Charles tries as hard as he can to stay out of it, despite the fact that the players in the drama are his friends. Hammet off-sets Charles’ world-weary reticence with the exuberant curiosity of his wife Nora. The tension between the foils plays well to draw out Hammet’s big idea – that life doesn’t come with any real resolution, just theories and guesswork.

On one level, The Thin Man is a fun, easy read and a good entry point into the world of suspense fiction. On another, it shows us how the highborn notions of philosophy are filtered into the popular psyche, in this case, the relativistic vision that forms the framework for postmodern multiculturalism. And with a 1933 copyright, it also shows how long the idea has been settling in with us.