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,
The Pinkerton Labor Spy Friedman, had worked in the agency as Mr. McParland's stenographer. "The Pinkerton Labor Spy" criticized the Pinkerton Detective Agency from a pro-labor point of view. Charlie Siringo, another former employee of the agency, had no sympathy for labor, yet wrote books about his experiences as a Pinkerton Detective that were so objectionable to the company, they were repeatedly suppressed. In 1936, the La Follette Committee of the United States Senate investigated and publicized abuses of detective agencies, including Pinkerton. The Pinkerton Agency eventually shifted from detective work to security services, at least in part due to such criticism. The Pinkerton