The Thin Man (Mystery Masters) CD + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

The Thin Man (Mystery Masters) CD

The Thin Man, Dashiell Hammett's classic tale of murder in Manhattan, became the popular movie series with William Powell and Myrna Loy, and both the movies and the novel continue to captivate new generations of fans. Nick and Nora Charles, accompanied by their schnauzer, Asta, are lounging in their suite at the Normandie in New York City for the Christmas holiday, enjoying the prerogatives of wealth: meals delivered at any hour, theater openings, taxi rides at dawn, rubbing elbows with the gangster element in speakeasies. They should be annoyingly affected, but they charm. Mad about each other, sardonic, observant, kind to those in need, and cool in a fight, Nick and Nora are graceful together, and their home life provides a sanctuary from the rough world of gangsters, hoodlums, and police investigations into which Nick is immediately plunged. A lawyer-friend asks Nick to help find a killer and reintroduces him to the family of Richard Wynant, a more-than-eccentric inventor who disappeared from society 10 years before. His former wife, the lush and manipulative Mimi, has remarried a European fortune hunter who turns out to be a vindictive former associate of her first husband and is bent on the ruin of Wynant's family fortune. Wynant's children, Dorothy and Gilbert, seem to have inherited the family aversion to straight talk. Dorothy, who has matured into a beautiful young woman, has a crush on Nick, and so, in a hero-worshipping way, does mama's boy Gilbert. Nick and Nora respond kindly to their neediness as Nick tries to make sense of misinformation, false identities, far-fetched alibis, and, at the center of the confusion, the mystery of The Thin Man, Richard Wynant. Is he mad? Is he a killer? Or is he really an eccentric inventor protecting his discovery from intellectual theft? The dialogue is spare, the locales lively, and Nick, the narrator, shows us the players as they are, while giving away little of his own thoughts.No one is telling the whole truth, but Nick remains mostly patient as he doggedly tries to backtrack the lies. Hammett's New York is a cross between Damon Runyon and Scott Fitzgerald--more glamorous than real, but compelling when visited in the company of these two charmers. The lives of the rich and famous don't get any better than this! --Barbara SchlieperRead More

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  • Product Description

    Nick Charles was a hard-edged gumshoe for years until his wife Nora?s father died and left her an inheritance. After six years living away, he?s back in his old haunt, New York, where it seems his very unwelcome past is ready to resurface. Enter Dorothy Wynant, daughter of weird (and possibly insane) inventor Clyde Wynant. Wynant's secretary/mistress has just been murdered. Despite Nick?s constant assertions that he?s not in the business anymore and definitely not on the case, he gets drawn into a complicated web of family matters, confused identities, and surprising evidence. Wife Nora is a willing accomplice as they sift through the players in the mystery, all the while sipping cocktails and socializing in rarefied New York society. Despite his reluctance, he and Nora are drawn into a byzantine world of speakeasies, sociopaths, and shady ladies. Reader William Dufris renders Hammett?s wit and world-weariness with his usual panache.

    Dashiell Hammett is recognized as a master of hard-boiled detective fiction. The Thin Man was made into a movie in 1934, directed by W. S. Van Dyke, and The Thin Man was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture and spawned an entire series of films.

  • 1572704438
  • 9781572704435
  • Dashiell Hammett
  • 30 March 2005
  • Mystery Masters
  • Audio CD (CD)
  • Unabridged
  • Audiobook
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