Nick is, of course, retired at the beginning of the book, but he’s quickly coaxed out of retirement to help solve the case, especially since the Wynants are old friends of his. There are the Wynants (several of them), the Jorgensons, the policeman, and a whole host of other usual and unusual suspects that Nick has to take into account. There are a lot of characters and names to remember, and they aren’t introduced very well (character development is kind of thin in a novel like this). A lot of the time I wasn’t sure what the heck was happening, but I just went with it, and it all worked out. It turned out, though, that I was correct.Īnyway, I couldn’t help finding the book inferior to the film, but it was still good in its way. I also remembered that in the film Wynant was murdered first, but perhaps I was wrong. One thing I did notice was that in the book, Asta, their dog, is female in the movie the dog is a male. I haven’t seen the film in a while (although I’ve watched others in the series recently), so I can’t really say whether the events in the two versions differed dramatically, although I think they did a little bit.

But the movie is more funny and more witty than the book. And probably in terms of the style, the book is much better. In almost every case, the book is way better than the movie. Still, I have to say: the movie is better. Unlike The Maltese Falcon, there’s kind of a balance between toughness and something else: “knowing and unabashedly romantic”, as the blurb put it. Except for the addition that his wife is doing Christmas shopping. The first sentence, it seems to me, is the typical hard-boiled detective opening: leaning against a counter, a girl walks up to him.

I loved the opening of The Thin Man it was so funny and to-the-point. At once knowing and unabashedly romantic, The Thin Man is a murder mystery that doubles as a sophisticated co medy of manners.” “ Nick and Nora Charles are Hammett’s most enchanting creations, a rich, glamorous couple who solve homicides in between wisecracks and martinis. She was small and blonde, and whether you looked at her face or her body in powder-blue sports clothes, the result was satisfactory. I was leaning against the bar in a speakeasy on Fifty-second Street, waiting for Nora to finish her Christmas shopping, when a girl got up from the table where she had been sitting with three other people and came over to me.

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett