The Thin Man

Informationen zum Autor Dashiell Samuel Hammett was born in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. He grew up in Philadelphia and Baltimore. Hammett left school at the age of fourteen and held several kinds of jobs thereafter—messenger boy, newsboy, clerk, operator, and stevedore, finally becoming an operative for Pinkerton’s Detective Agency. Sleuthing suited young Hammett, but World War I intervened, interrupting his work and injuring his health. When Sergeant Hammett was discharged from the last of several hospitals, he resumed detective work. He soon turned to writing, and in the late 1920s Hammett became the unquestioned master of detective-story fiction in America. In The Maltese Falcon (1930) he first introduced his famous private eye, Sam Spade. The Thin Man (1932) offered another immortal sleuth, Nick Charles. Red Harvest (1929), The Dain Curse (1929), and The Glass Key (1931) are among his most successful novels. During World War II, Hammett again served as sergeant in the Army, this time for more than two years, most of which he spent in the Aleutians. Hammett’s later life was marked in part by ill health, alcoholism, a period of imprisonment related to his alleged membership in the Communist Party, and by his long-time companion, the author Lillian Hellman, with whom he had a very volatile relationship. His attempt at autobiographical fiction survives in the story “Tulip,” which is contained in the posthumous collection The Big Knockover (1966, edited by Lillian Hellman). Another volume of his stories, The Continental Op (1974, edited by Stephen Marcus), introduced the final Hammett character: the “Op,” a nameless detective (or “operative”) who displays little of his personality, making him a classic tough guy in the hard-boiled mold—a bit like Hammett himself. Klappentext In Dashiell Hammett's famous crime novel! we meet one of the detective-story master's most enchanting creations! Nick and Nora Charles! a rich! glamorous couple who solve homicides in between wisecracks and martinis. At once knowing and unabashedly romantic! The Thin Man is a classic murder mystery that doubles as a sophisticated comedy of manners. Leseprobe 1 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. She was small and blonde, and whether you looked at her face or at her body in powder-blue sports clothes, the result was satisfactory. "Aren't you Nick Charles?" she asked. I said: "Yes." She held out her hand. "I'm Dorothy Wynant. You don't remember me, but you ought to remember my father, Clyde Wynant. You--" "Sure," I said, "and I remember you now, but you were only a kid of eleven or twelve then, weren't you?" "Yes, that was eight years ago. Listen: remember those stories you told me? Were they true?" "Probably not. How is your father?" She laughed. "I was going to ask you. Mamma divorced him, you know, and we never hear from him--except when he gets in the newspapers now and then with some of his carryings on. Don't you ever see him?" My glass was empty. I asked her what she would have to drink, she said Scotch and soda. I ordered two of them and said: "No, I've been living in San Francisco." She said slowly: "I'd like to see him. Mamma would raise hell if she found it out, but I'd like to see him." "Well?" "He's not where we used to live, on Riverside Drive, and he's not in the phone book or city directory." "Try his lawyer," I suggested. Her face brightened. "Who is he?" "It used to be a fellow named Mac-something-or-other--Macaulay, that's it, Herbert Macaulay. He was in the Singer Building." "Lend me a nickel," she said, and went out to the telephone. She came back smiling. "I found him. He's just roun...

Product details

• Authors: Dashiell Hammett
• Assisted by: Jeff Stone (Editor)
• Publisher: Vintage USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 17.07.1989
• EAN: 9780679722632
• ISBN: 978-0-679-72263-2
• No. of pages: 208
• Dimensions: 130 mm x 202 mm x 15 mm
• Series: VINTAGE BOOKS; Vintage crime/Black Lizard
• Subject: Fiction > Suspense