The last novel from the unsurpassed master of American detective fiction, Dashiell Hammett''s The Thin Man is a genre-defining mystery novel, published in Penguin Modern Classics.Ex-detective Nick Charles plans to spend a quiet Christmas holed up in a hotel suite with his glamorous wife Nora, their pet Schnauzer and a case of good ScotchBut then a bullet-riddled corpse and a missing inventor (not to mention the attentions of a beautiful young woman) force him out of retirement and back into business. Trying to make sense of false leads, suspicious alibis and mistaken identities, Nick and Nora are thrown into a world of gangsters, hoodlums and speakeasies, where no-one can be trusted.Dashiell Hammett was credited with inventing the hardboiled crime novel, and this story of murder and mayhem in Manhattan, with its breakneck plot, snappy dialogue - and the hard-drinking, wisecracking couple Nick and Nora - is one of his most thrillingly enjoyable mysteries.Dashiel Samuel Hammett (1894-196