The Thin Man introduces Nick and Nora, New York's coolest crime-solving couple. Nick retired from detecting when his wife inherited a tidy sum, but six years later a pretty blonde spies him at a speakeasy and asks for his help finding her father, an eccentric inventor who was once Nick's client. Nick can no more resist the case than a morning cocktail or a good fight, and soon he and Nora are caught in a complicated web of confused identities and cold-blooded murder. William Dufris' inspired performance brilliantly captures the edgy panache of 1930s New York.
Hammett was the quintessential tough-guy writer of 1930s' noir. It's interesting to see how he holds up after all these years; you'll be astounded at how much Nick and Nora Charles drink, for starters. Welcome though it is, this is a less than perfect production. Narrator William Dufris, who normally is in tune with his characters, misses the mark here. The women, even suave, ironic Nora, all sound hysterical and whiny even when they're supposed to be seductive or charming, which makes it hard to tell why anyone puts up with them. This does not help the rather creaky plot, nor do the forced tough-guy male voices, which sound so alike that it's often hard to know which character is talking. No shades of William Powell and Myrna Loy here, alas. B.G. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine
Boston Globe...
"Dashiell Hammett is a master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hell of a writer."
About the Author
Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) spent his early twenties working as a detective in San Francisco. He began writing fiction after serving in WWI, and had his first success in the popular crime magazine, Black Mask. He went on to write five novels, including R
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