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,
Fatty Finn characters. It was the first feature film to be based on an Australian comic strip. In 1980 the strip was adapted into a feature film, "Fatty Finn" directed by Maurice Murphy and starring Ben Oxenbould with Rebecca Rigg. The film grossed $1,064,000 at the box office in Australia and was nominated for seven Australian Film Institute Awards in 1981 winning in the categories of 'Best Achievement in Costume Design' and 'Best Original Music Score'. In the same year Sydney journalist and screenwriter Bob Ellis produced a book of the movie, "The Adventures of Fatty Finn" with illustrations taken from Nicholls'