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,
Pinkerton (detective agency) 1960s, even the word "detective" disappeared from the agency's letterhead. In 1999, the company was bought by Securitas AB, a Swedish security company, for $384 million, followed by the acquisition of longtime Pinkerton rival, the William J. Burns Detective Agency (founded in 1910), to create (as a division of the parent) Securitas Security Services USA. Pinkerton (detective agency) Pinkerton, founded as the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, is a private security guard and detective agency established in the United States by Scotsman Allan Pinkerton in 1850 and currently a subsidiary of Securitas AB. Pinkerton became famous when he claimed to have