The Thin Man

When I travel for pleasure I usually carve out time to do some reading.  In my latest travel adventure, one of the books I took with me was The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett.  If you have never heard of Dashiell Hammett, he wrote The Maltese Falcon, which was turned into what is now the more famous movie.

If you like detective noir, if you like a good story with interesting but not too deep characters, if you like a fast read and witty banter, you may like The Thin Man.

Nick Charles is a middle aged ex private detective with a rich and pretty young wife.  In a gritty manner, the book walks through a short period of their lives as they are drawn into the seedy troubles of an old work associate of Nick's.  The couple cheerfully drink their way from posh hotel rooms to speakeasies on the journey to solving the mystery of The Thin Man.

This book is not revelations about the depth of mankind's soul, is not an expose of hidden knowledge about New York City during prohibition, and it is not treatise on great moral problems of our day.  It is a fine read, and an interesting view of what real life detective Hammett thought about life in the 1930s.