I crafted this fiction for a contest in 2018. The assignment was to pick one of a pair of opening and closing lines from a published author, and write a different story in between. Of the four authors available, I picked Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man (1932). I didn’t win, but here’s the story for you to judge.
I was leaning against the bar in a speakeasy on Fifty Second Street, waiting for Nora to finish her Christmas shopping…