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,
Jon Arbuckle Jon Arbuckle Jon Arbuckle is a fictional character from the "Garfield" comic strip by Jim Davis. He has also appeared in the animated television series "Garfield and Friends", the computer-animated "The Garfield Show", and two live-action/computer-animated feature films. A geeky and clumsy man yet caring owner, Jon is the owner of Garfield and Odie. He converses with Garfield and is often the butt of his jokes. Jon's birthday is July 28, as Jon told Garfield that he was 29 years old (he would have been 30 but he was sick a year) in a December 23, 1980 strip. However, in