The Thin Man, Dashiell Hammet

 The Book: 

This is a Nick and Nora Charles book. Nick a former P.I. and his wife Nora returned to NYC for Christmas from California. While visiting their old haunts, they run into the daughter of one of Nick's former clients, eccentric inventor Clyde Wynant. Dorothy (the daughter) reveals she and her mother, Clyde's ex-wife, are in town looking for Clyde and are worried because they cannot find him. Dorothy's mom, Mimi has remarried a handsome Swede, Carl Jorgenson. Nick explains to Dorothy that he's no longer an investigator, but he wishes her well, but Nora feels sorry for Dorothy. The next morning, the little tete-a-tete with Dorothy comes under examination from the police when Mimi discovers Clyde's secretary and sometimes lover, Julia Wolfe has been murdered.

With Clyde as suspect number one, Carl Jorgenson's identity is actually that of Clyde's main rival, and Mimi lies about, well, everything, Nora encourages Nick to get involved. With a lot of drinking, a lot of following up on Dorothy, trying to figure out Clyde's son Giles, and Clyde still nowhere to be seen, what is Nick to do? He gives the police a few ideas, takes a few ideas from Clyde's attorney and tries to survive the holidays without the mob drawing him back into his old lifestyle. All Nick wants to do is go home and run his wife's business, but in order to do that, he is left to do the only thing he can. Solve the case.

My Thoughts: 

Dammit, an editor got a hold of Mr. Hammet between this book and the last one and convinced him that adverbs are useless. Don't get me wrong, I love his style, but I LOVED the adverbs more. 

This book, crammed with action and convoluted plots is as good as anything Agatha Christie ever wrote. Hammet is a match for Christie's genius for parallel thinking and pulling a plot rabbit out of a hat. He plants clues superbly, and obeys every rule of mystery fiction. 

I could have done without the drinking in the book, but it does make for a believable atmosphere. This book is definitely worth the read.

How Much My Library Card Saved Me: 

This book came to me from Glenview Public Library. It's in relatively good condition, although the outer protective plastic cover looks like it's been around for a while. According to the stamp inside of the book (hey, I think I'm beginning to figure out Glenview's systems) this book entered into their collection on June 27, 2001, so yeah...that tracks. Then this book has been relatively lightly read. It's the large print edition of the book. I sporadically check out the large print versions just to see if it will speed up my reading, and it does not. And I feel like it's not easier to read the large print than the regular size. I don't know if anything else is done with the larger print, like say a change in fonts or whatever, but I can't tell a difference. There are no marks and only a few dog ears in the book. Well done for a library. I checked out a second book with this one, so math must be deployed in order to ascertain how much my card saved me. Interestingly, for this exact hard cover, if it were to be replaced, according to Amazon it would cost $185.00. But that's not the number my system uses. I love the art deco art cover, with it's bold lines. Very nice. By deducting the price on the back of the other book from the total, I reach a total of $29.00. That's the number we are using. 

This Book                                                     $29.00

Items Reviewed This Year                          $471.94

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