The Thin Man

‘When I opened my eyes and sat up in bed Nora was shaking me and a man with a gun in his hand was standing in the bedroom doorway.’

Ex-detective Nick Charles attracts trouble like a magnet. He thinks his sleuthing days are over, but when Julia Wolf, a former acquaintance, is found dead, her body riddled with bullets, Nick – along with his glamorous wife, Nora – can’t resist making a few enquiries. Clyde Miller Wynant, Julia’s lover and boss, has disappeared. Everyone is after him, but Nick is not convinced Wynant is the murderer – and when he finds a junked-up hoodlum with a careless attitude to guns in his bedroom, it’s only the beginning of his troubles.

Set among the speakeasies of early 1930s Manhattan, The Thin Man is hardboiled crime at its wisecracking best.

‘Harsh lights and romantic black shadows: this is the heyday of American crime writing’ – Guardian