Nick and Nora Charles

Nick and Nora Charles, or Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Charles (which is short for his Greek name "Charalambides"), are the characters created by Dashiell Hammett in his novel The Thin Man, which was made into a movie with five sequels. Nick is a private detective and Nora a wealthy society woman whose snobbish family thinks she has married beneath herself; Hammett modeled her on his lover Lillian Hellman. Their banter provides comic relief of the type that would later be seen between John Steed and Emma Peel in The Avengers.