Skip to content

THE THIN MAN.

THE THIN MAN.

Click for full-size.

THE THIN MAN.

by HAMMETT, DASHIELL

  • Used
  • Hardcover
  • first
Condition
See description
Seller
Seller rating:
This seller has earned a 5 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.
Greencastle, Pennsylvania, United States
Item Price
£6,022.50
Or just £6,006.44 with a
Bibliophiles Club Membership
£7.63 Shipping to USA
Standard delivery: 7 to 14 days

More Shipping Options

Payment Methods Accepted

  • Visa
  • Mastercard
  • American Express
  • Discover
  • PayPal

About This Item

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1934., 1934. First edition. First edition. First state of text with "seep" for the word "sleep" on page 209. 8vo. Cloth is lightly mottled as is usually the case with this title, else near fine in dust jacket, with light professional restoration to spine ends and corners. Housed in a two tone quarter leather and cloth clamshell case with titles stamped in gold on the spine. A lawyer-friend asks Nick Charles to help find a killer and reintroduces him to the family of Richard Wynant, an eccentric inventor who disappeared from society 10 years prior. Wynant's former wife, Mimi, has remarried a European fortune hunter who turns out to be a spiteful 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. 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? Basis for the 1934 film of the same name that starred William Powell, Myrna Loy, Maureen O'Sullivan, and others. The film was nominated for four Oscar awards.

Synopsis

Dashiell Samuel Hammett was born in St. Mary’s County. He grew up in Philadelphia and Baltimore. Hammett left school at the age of fourteen and held several kinds of jobs thereafter—messenger boy, newsboy, clerk, operator, and stevedore, finally becoming an operative for Pinkerton’s Detective Agency. Sleuthing suited young Hammett, but World War I intervened, interrupting his work and injuring his health. When Sergeant Hammett was discharged from the last of several hospitals, he resumed detective work. He soon turned to writing, and in the late 1920s Hammett became the unquestioned master of detective-story fiction in America. In The Maltese Falcon (1930) he first introduced his famous private eye, Sam Spade. The Thin Man (1932) offered another immortal sleuth, Nick Charles. Red Harvest (1929), The Dain Curse (1929), and The Glass Key (1931) are among his most successful novels. During World War II, Hammett again served as sergeant in the Army, this time for more than two years, most of which he spent in the Aleutians. Hammett’s later life was marked in part by ill health, alcoholism, a period of imprisonment related to his alleged membership in the Communist Party, and by his long-time companion, the author Lillian Hellman, with whom he had a very volatile relationship. His attempt at autobiographical fiction survives in the story “Tulip,” which is contained in the posthumous collection The Big Knockover (1966, edited by Lillian Hellman). Another volume of his stories, The Continental Op (1974, edited by Stephen Marcus), introduced the final Hammett character: the “Op,” a nameless detective (or “operative”) who displays little of his personality, making him a classic tough guy in the hard-boiled mold—a bit like Hammett himself.

Reviews

(Log in or Create an Account first!)

You’re rating the book as a work, not the seller or the specific copy you purchased!

Details

Bookseller
BUCKINGHAM BOOKS US (US)
Bookseller's Inventory #
26312
Title
THE THIN MAN.
Author
HAMMETT, DASHIELL
Book Condition
Used
Quantity Available
1
Edition
First edition
Binding
Hardcover
Publisher
Alfred A. Knopf, 1934.
Place of Publication
New York
Date Published
1934

Terms of Sale

BUCKINGHAM BOOKS

We accept checks and all major credit cards. Prices are NET to all. PA residents must add 6% sales tax. It is our preference to ship via either UPS or Priority Mail. All oversized books and all shipments outside the U.S. will be charged actual shipping, insurance, and handling costs. All parcels shall be shipped insured. All items may be returned within 7 days of receipt with prior notification. We request any items for return be sent by their original shipping route, be well packaged and fully insured.

About the Seller

BUCKINGHAM BOOKS

Seller rating:
This seller has earned a 5 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.
Biblio member since 2006
Greencastle, Pennsylvania

About BUCKINGHAM BOOKS

Buckingham Books specializes in new, used and rare books dealing with Mystery and Western Americana. Books in the mystery field include not only Mystery, but also Detective, Espionage, and Adventure Fiction. Our Western Americana Section offers books about the development of the American West. All books in our inventory are First Editions unless clearly stated otherwise.

Glossary

Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:

Jacket
Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
First Edition
In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...
First State
used in book collecting to refer to a book from the earliest run of a first edition, generally distinguished by a change in some...
Spine
The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
Cloth
"Cloth-bound" generally refers to a hardcover book with cloth covering the outside of the book covers. The cloth is stretched...
Fine
A book in fine condition exhibits no flaws. A fine condition book closely approaches As New condition, but may lack the...

Frequently asked questions

This Book’s Categories

tracking-