The Thin Man

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The last novel from the unsurpassed master of American detective fiction, Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man is a genre-defining mystery novel, published in Penguin Modern Classics. 
 
Ex-detective Nick Charles plans to spend a quiet Christmas holed up in a hotel suite with his glamorous wife Nora, their pet Schnauzer and a case of good Scotch. But then a bullet-riddled corpse and a missing inventor (not to mention the attentions of a beautiful young woman) force him out of retirement and back into business. Trying to make sense of false leads, suspicious alibis and mistaken identities, Nick and Nora are thrown into a world of gangsters, hoodlums and speakeasies, where no-one can be trusted. Dashiell Hammett was credited with inventing the hardboiled crime novel, and this story of murder and mayhem in Manhattan, with its breakneck plot, snappy dialogue - and the hard-drinking, wisecracking couple Nick and Nora - is one of his most thrillingly enjoyable mysteries. 
 
Dashiel Samuel Hammett (1894-1961) was born on a farm in southern Maryland, and grew up in Philadelphia and Baltimore. He left school at the age of fourteen, and after various jobs became an operative for Pinkerton's Detective Agency. The First World War intervened, and Hammett soon turned to writing, becoming, during the 1920s, the unquestioned master of detective-story fiction in America. The Maltese Falcon (1930), The Thin Man (1932) and The Glass Key (1931) are among his most famous novels. 
 
If you enjoyed The Thin Man, you might like Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep and Other Novels, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. 
 
'The ace performer' 
Raymond Chandler, author of The Big Sleep 
 
'The exuberance of language, the relish with which seediness is described ... it's a pleasure to imagine Hammett cutting loose with whatever rascally high jinks he could cook up' 
Margaret Atwood, author of The Blind Assassin

'The exuberance of language, the relish with which seediness is described .. it's a pleasure to imagine Hammett cutting loose with whatever rascally high jinks he could cook up'

Dashiel Samuel Hammett was born in 1894 and grew up in Philadelphia and Baltimore. He left school at the age of fourteen, and after various jobs became an operative for Pinkerton's Detective Agency. World War I intervened, and Hammett soon turned to writing, and in the late 1920s became the unquestioned master of detective-story fiction in America. The Maltese Falcon (1930), The Thin Man (1932) and The Glass Key (1931) are among his most famous novels. He died in 1961.

Ex-detective Nick Charles plans to spend a quiet Christmas holed up in a hotel suite with his glamorous wife Nora, their pet Schnauzer and a case of good Scotch. But then a bullet-riddled corpse and a missing inventor (not to mention the attentions of a beautiful young woman) force him out of retirement and back into business. Trying to make sense of false leads, suspicious alibis and mistaken identities, Nick and Nora are thrown into a world of gangsters, hoodlums and speakeasies, where no-one can be trusted. 
 
Dashiell Hammett was credited with inventing the hardboiled crime novel, and this story of murder and mayhem in Manhattan, with its breakneck plot, snappy dialogue - and the hard-drinking, wisecracking couple Nick and Nora - is one of his most thrillingly enjoyable mysteries.

The Dain Curse, The Glass Key, and Selected Stories

Four fabulous linked stories from the master of hard boiled crime. Introduced by James Ellroy, author of The Black Dahlia

Samuel Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) is recognized as the first master of hard-boiled detective fiction. His lean writing style, cynical characters and complex plots brought a new energy to pulp magazines then went on to define the genre in movies, radio and television where the private eye series became an entertainment staple. 
Hammett wrote more than 80 short stories and five novels: "Red Harvest" (1929), "The Dain Curse" (1929), "The Maltese Falcon" (1930), "The Glass Key" (1931) and "The Thin Man" (1934). He created tough guys Sam Spade and the Continental Op as well as debonaire sleuths Nick and Nora Charles. He wrote a comic strip ("Secret Agent X-9"), an original radio series ("The Fat Man") and worked on numerous scripts, often simply to polish dialogue. Hammett's crisp, colorful language brought gangster slang into everyday speech. 
 
INTRODUCER BIOGRAPHY: 
James Ellroy is the author of The Black Dahlia, My Dark Places and L. A. Confidential.

With his diamond-sharp prose and artfully handled intrigue, Dashiell Hammett virtually invented hard-boiled crime fiction. This omnibus edition includes four linked stories - 'The House in Turk Street', 'The Girl with the Silver Eyes', 'The Big Knockover' and '$106,000 Blood Money - featuring the Continental Op, Hammett's anonymous tough-guy detective. In The Dain Curse, the Op takes on a wealthy young woman who appears to be the victim of a deadly family curse. And in The Glass Key - Hammett's own favourite among his works - we encounter his most cynical, morally ambiguous hero and a hard-boiled version of a love triangle. In the works collected here, we can observe the process by which Hammett both stripped crime fiction down to its most subtle and searing essentials and elevated it to high literature.

The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, Red Harvest

As an operative for Pinkerton’s Detective Agency Dashiell Hammett knew about sleuthing from the inside, but his career was cut short by the ruin of his health in World War I. These three celebrated novels are therefore the products of a hard real life, not a literary education. Despite – or because of – that, Hammett had an enormous effect on mainstream writers between the wars. Like his readers, they were attracted by the combination of laconic style, sharp convincing dialogue, vivid settings and, above all, the low-life, hard-boiled characters who populate the streets of his stories. Taking detective fiction out of the drawing-room, Hammett ‘gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it’, as Raymond Chandler said. In so doing, he left his mark on modern fiction.

Dashiell Hammett

Harsh lights and romantic black shadows: this is the heyday of American crime writing

'When I opened my eyes and sat up in bed Nora was shaking me and a man with a gun in his hand was standing in the bedroom doorway.' 
 
Ex-detective Nick Charles attracts trouble like a magnet. He thinks his sleuthing days are over, but when Julia Wolf, a former acquaintance, is found dead, her body riddled with bullets, Nick - along with his glamorous wife, Nora - can't resist making a few enquiries. Clyde Miller Wynant, Julia's lover and boss, has disappeared. Everyone is after him, but Nick is not convinced Wynant is the murderer - and when he finds a junked-up hoodlum with a careless attitude to guns in his bedroom, it's only the beginning of his troubles.

Dashiell Hammett

Praise for The Thin Man

Harsh lights and romantic black shadows: this is the heyday of American crime writing

The ace performer

Books by Dashiell Hammett

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