Mr Pin
Mr Pin is the brains of the New Firm, a duo of interloping criminals in The Truth. In general Mr Pin makes the plans and decides where they are going to go and what they are going to do, but he is open to suggestions from his partner. Both men can become violent, but Mr Pin's violence is more directed and instrumental. The background of Mr Pin is much more vague than his partner, Mr Tulip.
He comes to a rather sticky end when he is impaled by the desk spike of William de Worde in the offices of The Ankh-Morpork Times after being trapped in a cellar with molten lead raining from the ceiling as the building burned. Mr Pin is then reincarnated into a potato and deep fried.
Mr Pin and Mr Tulip are very similar in many respects to Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar, a violent duo in Neverwhere, written by Neil Gaiman. The two authors have collaborated before in Good Omens, and sometimes make reference to each other's works. However, Pratchett has denied any conscious reference in this case.
It is possible that Mr Pin and Mr Tulip are taken as analogues of the Marvel Comics characters, the Kingpin and the Rose, organised crime figures.
Read more about this topic: Discworld Characters
Famous quotes containing the word pin:
“A man is a beggar who only lives to the useful, and, however he may serve as a pin or rivet in the social machine, cannot be said to have arrived at self-possession.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It is not, truly speaking, the labour that is divided; but the men: divided into mere segments of men—broken into small fragments and crumbs of life, so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)