Nick and Nora Charles the bantering, romantically involved detective duo has become a well-used trope in literature, stage, screen, and television ever since. The characters first appear in Dashiell Hammett's best-selling last novel "The Thin Man" (1934). Nick is an alcoholic former private detective who retired when he married Nora, a wealthy Nob Hill heiress. Hammett reportedly modeled Nora on his longtime partner Lillian Hellman, and the characters' boozy, flippant dialogue on their relationship. (The novel also mentions that Nick was once a Pinkerton detective, as was Hammett.) The novel is considered one of the seminal texts of the hard-boiled subgenre of mystery novels,
Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective area of Los Angeles. Most of the stories are set in and around the film studios, and focus on crimes involving people in the movie business – film stars, stuntmen, producers, agents, extras and an endless array of glamorous female "starlets". The Dan Turner stories were notorious for their emphasis on sexual content, although this was generally implied rather than described explicitly. A large number of the Dan Turner stories were written by Bellem himself, who had a good inside knowledge of Hollywood having worked as a film extra. The "Hollywood Detective" magazine also featured a Dan Turner comic strip,