My Bouchercon 2015 panels: Donald Westlake on The Thin Man

I wanted to say something about The Thin Man, but Donald Westlake said it better:

“When I was 14 or 15 I read Hammett's The Thin Man (the first Hammett I'd read) and it was a defining moment. It was a sad, lonely, lost book, that pretended to be cheerful and aware and full of good fellowship, and I hadn't known you could do that: seem to be telling this, but really telling that; three-dimensional writing, like three-dimensional chess. Nabokov was the other master of that.” 

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I'll discuss Dashiell Hammett in a special event at Bouchercon 2015 in Raleigh, N.C., next month.  The discussion is called "Inside the Mind and Work of Dashiell Hammett," and the featured guests are Julie M. Rivett, Hammett's editor and granddaughter; and Richard Layman, Hammett's biographer and a pioneering name in Hammett scholarship. See you there on Saturday, October 10, at 8:30 a.m.

 © Peter Rozovsky 2015