The Thin Man

The Thin Man
by Dashiell Hammett
1933

Thoughts Going In

I am expecting excellence. I'm sure I recognize the book's title from the movie of the same name. So, that should speak highly of the source material, right?

In any event, I'm expecting a true to life detective novel, no fanciful gadgets, no narrow getaways, no endless brawls, nor much in the way of gun play. So, more of an Agatha Christie novel than James Bond... only better than both.

Being written in the thirties, I would expect it takes place more or less contemporaneously, so late depression... where money is tight... and the broads, tighter still.

Notable Quotes

I was leaning against the bar in a speakeasy on Fifty-second Street, waiting for Nora to finish her Christmas shopping, when...

Mamma's not really dangerous. She's just a case of arrested development. Most of us have outgrown ethics and morals and so on. Mamma's just not grown up to them yet.

"This excitement has put us behind in our drinking."

Running Thoughts

• Dashiell Hammett is the author of The Maltese Falcon.
• The whole novel sort of writes itself, after the first line.
• With the joke being, so I'll be writing a different novel.
• When I was a child, I thought I'd be going to parties left and right.
• I maybe go to one every other year.
• Maybe not even that.
• Of course, I suppose it matters what one wants to call a dinner party.
• Even so...
• At first, I called him an alcoholic.
• Now, I realize he's just a drunk.
• I like the short chapters.
• I like that they are stacked...
  • No empty pages between chapters.
• But there are too many characters.
  • I am already loosing track.
• Plenty of incest to go around.
• Lawyers are not to be trusted.
• You know, as a general rule.
• Life is one long party.
• At least there is room service.
• The conversation goes round and round.
• I'm getting a bit dizzy, loosing track.
• That might be part of the fun.
• Certainly, I am forgetting my own troubles.
• It made me chuckle.
• It's solid wit.
• Socially Disaffected, to be sure.
• Both of them.
• Slang!
• A verb becomes a noun...
  • Conjugated back into a verb.
• A warrant?
• Don't make me laugh.
• It made me laugh.
• The art of saying no more than you absolutely have to.
• He plays well with the police.
• Back in the days when folks communicated via newspaper ads.
• As if.
• I don't know if I want to read that.
• Quite the article.
• How about a summary?
• Yikes!
• What kind of foreshadowing is that?
• I find myself fighting with the book binding.
• Ah, the joys of a book older than I am that's never been read before.
  • It's joints are all out of shape.
• It's like reading an old time movie.
• Bugsy? Sudsy?
• What's the difference?
• I don't like the way the police operate.
• I don't know why the bad guy is bad.
• I hate it when one character is two.
• You know, has two names.
• Plays two different roles.
• Also, I've already lost track.
• I never had it.
• Why lie?
• I can't follow the truth.
• Two birds with one gun.
• Degrees of Drunkenness!
• "Do this!"
• It is done.
• 2 + 2 = 4
• 2 & 2 = 22
• Hit first.
• Hit second.
• Hit third.
• The talking over each other part is fun.
• Can you kill a dead man?
• We don't want a misfire, now, do we?
• Another all-nighter.
• This story is wound too tight.
• Sober is not an option.
• I guess, it all goes down tonight.
• Nice wordplay.
• More pleasing than a pun.
• More like poetry.
• Poetical lyrical wit.
• The Banter of the Bard.
• Sometimes, the author tells a story.
• And sometimes, it's the author's character that does the telling.
• What is it about raising animals for their fur that sounds so romantic?
• It comes down to that.
• Who is older?
• Because he's acting sort of young.
• Maybe, they should all go in on that fur farm together.
• The pace seems to be picking up.
• The race to the finish.
• We're on short time.
• And there ain't much of a caper, here.
• Goons, coppers, and characters
• Pleasing.
• I don't understand the curves.
• But the raw idea is pleasing enough.
• The post drink debriefing.
• And that's that...
• Or will be as soon as he stops talking.
• I like the notes written in future past tense.
• Notes from the future, clarifying the past.
  • (This happened.)
  • (This did not.)

The Debriefing

The banter was pleasing at the beginning. But by the end, I did not care... perhaps, in large part, because the list of characters was too long for me to manage. But then, in two hundred pages, we are only talking about a couple dozen characters (over half of which are minor), so maybe the characters were not handled that well... not reintroduced often enough for one of my limited social graces to recognized them by name... without even a face to place them.

And as to the caper, itself. Let us just say, it is all in the title... a bit of a notion stretched into a book by the additional of a bit of drinking and socializing. Fun, if you are into that sort of thing... or simply want to take a break, a pleasant drunk (a recently retired detective, don't you know) your host for the duration.