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,
Kathrene Pinkerton Kathrene Pinkerton Kathrene Pinkerton (June 9, 1887 – September 6, 1967) was both a fiction and non fiction writer whose writings focused on life in the northern wilderness of Canada. Pinkerton was born on June 9, 1887 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Later, she went on to earn a BA at the University of Wisconsin in 1909. Upon graduating, Pinkerton went on to conduct social work, focusing on tuberculosis outbreaks in rural Wisconsin. On March 24, 1911, she would marry Robert E. Pinkerton, also a writer. In 1912, the couple moved to the wilderness of northern Ontario. There, they built their own