1934’s The Thin Man is what we like to think of as a palate cleanser. After reading a few less accomplished authors you grab a Hammett because you know he’s great. It’s pure fun following functional alcoholic Nick Charles and his equally hard drinking young wife Nora as they navigate deception and murder. How much do Nick and Nora Charles drink? At one point Nick wakes up feeling terrible and realizes it’s because he’d gone to bed sober. Several cocktail sessions a day is about average. Maybe that’s why danger doesn’t faze them. Even being shot at is reason for a libation and a quip.
This edition of The Thin Man is a rare one. It’s the Pocket Books paperback from 1945, with the type of art that was prevalent on paperbacks during the heyday of pulp. We can’t tell you much about the book that hasn’t already been written, including the fact that it’s less a mystery than a comedy of manners, but there is one aspect that’s rarely commented upon. Nick Charles is of Greek descent. His full last name is Charalambides. This was the ’30s, when there was open racism in the U.S. against Greeks. James M. Cain delves into this in The Postman Always Rings Twice, in which the Greek character Nick Papadakis is insulted behind his back and set apart as a non-white inferior.
So in The Thin Man Hammett was portraying Nick Charles not as the upper crust dilettante William Powell made famous in the film version, but as a tough guy outsider. People are a bit afraid of him. Filmgoers were definitely not afraid of pencil mustached William Powell. Hammett wanted the written Charles to possess street cred, to be a person who had been places and seen things others had not. Hammett was going for a different type of detective in more ways than merely his drinking habits. Charles’ maverick role is just a little extra flavor in an already entertaining novel. The actual mystery is difficult to follow, but even so we highly recommend this if you haven’t read it.
