* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans
Private detective Philip Marlowe is investigating a dead-end missing person case when he sees a felon, Moose Malloy, barging into a nightclub called Florian's, looking for his ex-girlfriend Velma ... (Wikipedia)
Mousy Orfamay Quest from Manhattan, Kansas asks Philip Marlowe to search for her older brother Orrin, who had recently come out to work in nearby Bay City (a fictional town modelled on Santa Monica ... (Wikipedia)
Private investigator Philip Marlowe is called to the home of the wealthy and elderly General Sternwood, in the month of October. He wants Marlowe to deal with an attempt by a bookseller named Arthur ... (Wikipedia)
‘Sam’ Spade is a private detective in San Francisco , in partnership with Miles Archer. The beautiful "Miss Wonderley" hires them to follow Floyd Thursby, who has run off with her sister. Archer ... (Wikipedia)
The Continental Op is called to Personville (known as "Poisonville" to the locals) by the newspaper publisher Donald Willsson, who is murdered before the Op has a chance to meet with him. The Op ... (Wikipedia)
Walter Huff, an insurance agent, falls for the married Phyllis Nirdlinger, who consults him about accident insurance for her unsuspecting husband. In spite of his instinctual decency, and intrigued ... (Wikipedia)
The story revolves around Ned Beaumont, a gambler and best friend of the criminal political boss Paul Madvig. Ned finds the body of a senator's son on the street, and Madvig asks him to thwart the ... (Wikipedia)
The story is narrated in the first person by Frank Chambers, a young drifter who stops at a rural California diner for a meal and ends up working there. The diner is operated by a beautiful young ... (Wikipedia)
Tony Last is a country gentleman, living with his wife Brenda and his eight-year-old son John Andrew in his ancestral home, Hetton Abbey. The house is a Victorian pseudo-Gothic pastiche described as ... (Wikipedia)
The story is told through the eyes of its protagonist, Lou Ford, a 29-year-old deputy sheriff in a small Texas town. Ford appears to be a regular, small-town cop leading an unremarkable existence; ... (Wikipedia)
On January 15, 1947, the torture-ravished body of a beautiful young woman is found in a vacant lot. The victim makes headlines as the Black Dahlia—and so begins the greatest manhunt in California ... (Goodreads)
The two main characters of the book are the narrator, Sal Paradise, and his friend Dean Moriarty, much admired for his carefree attitude and sense of adventure, a free-spirited maverick eager to ... (Wikipedia)
Tom Ripley is a young man struggling to make a living in New York City by whatever means necessary, including a series of small-time confidence scams . One day, he is approached by shipping magnate ... (Wikipedia)
The sixth James Bond thriller from Ian Fleming’s typewriter. Dispatched by M to investigate the mysterious disappearance of MI6’s Jamaica station chief, Bond was expecting a holiday in the sun. But ... (Goodreads)
A study in scarlet – The sign of four -- Adventures of Sherlock Holmes : A scandal in Bohemia ; The red-headed league ; A case of identity ; The Boscombe Valley mystery ; The five orange pips ; The ... (Goodreads)
In 1327, Franciscan friar William of Baskerville and Adso of Melk , a Benedictine novice travelling under his protection, arrive at a Benedictine monastery in Northern Italy to attend a theological ... (Wikipedia)
Bertie returns to London from several weeks in Cannes spent in the company of his Aunt Dahlia Travers and her daughter Angela. In Bertie's absence, Jeeves has been advising Bertie's old school ... (Wikipedia)
John and Alice (Rutherford) Clayton, Viscount and Lady Greystoke from England , are marooned in the western coastal jungles of equatorial Africa in 1888. Some time later, their son John Clayton II , ... (Wikipedia)
The story is about several Los Angeles Police Department officers in the early 1950s who become embroiled in a mix of sex, corruption and murder following a massacre at the Nite Owl coffee shop. The ... (Wikipedia)
Told with deadpan humour and bitter irony, Kurt Vonnegut's cult tale of global destruction preys on our deepest fears of witnessing Armageddon and, worse still, surviving it ... Dr Felix Hoenikker, ... (Goodreads)
Major Scobie lives in a colony on the west coast of Africa during World War II , and is responsible for local security during wartime. His wife Louise, an unhappy, solitary woman who loves literature ... (Wikipedia)
In 1881, Doctor John Watson has returned to London after serving in the Second Anglo-Afghan War . He visits the Criterion Restaurant and runs into an old friend named Stamford, who had been a dresser ... (Wikipedia)
The pretty young prostitute is dead. Her alleged murderer—a minister's son—hanged himself in his jail cell. The case is closed. But the dead girl's father has come to Matthew Scudder for answers, ... (Goodreads)
Naked Lunch is a non-linear narrative without a clear plot. The following is a summary of some of the events in the book that could be considered the most relevant. The book begins with the ... (Wikipedia)
John le Carre's classic novels deftly navigate readers through the intricate shadow worlds of international espionage with unsurpassed skill and knowledge and have earned him – and his hero, British ... (Goodreads)
An old sailor named Billy Bones comes to lodge in the rural Admiral Benbow Inn on the Bristol Channel , in England. He tells the innkeeper's son, Jim Hawkins , to keep a lookout for "a one-legged ... (Wikipedia)
The novel centers on Harry Bosch , a Vietnam veteran who served as a " tunnel rat " (nicknamed Hari Kari Bosch), with the 1st Infantry Division — a specialized soldier whose job it was to go into the ... (Wikipedia)
Henry VIII has ordered the dissolution of the monasteries and England is full of informers. At the monastery of Scarnsea, events have spiralled out of control with the murder of Commissioner Robin ... (Goodreads)
Susan Barton is on a quest to find her kidnapped daughter who she knows has been taken to the New World. She is set adrift during a mutiny on a ship to Lisbon . When she comes ashore, she finds ... (Wikipedia)