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Recommendations based on The Killer Inside Meby Jim Thompson
* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans
Double Indemnity
by James M. Cain
Insurance salesman and femme fatale plot to murder her husband for the insurance money. Things go awry.
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 Big Sleep
by Raymond Chandler
Private eye investigates a complex case involving a wealthy family and blackmail.
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)
The Postman Always Rings Twice
by James M. Cain
A crime drama of forbidden passion, deception and murder.
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)
Red Harvest
by Dashiell Hammett
A private detective infiltrates a corrupt town to clean up the crime and corruption.
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)
The Maltese Falcon
by Dashiell Hammett
Detective Sam Spade must solve a mysterious case involving a precious artifact and a deadly trio of criminals.
‘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)
Naked Lunch
by William S. Burroughs
Surrealist exploration of addiction, delusions, and reality.
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)
A Scanner Darkly
by Philip K. Dick
A dystopian tale of surveillance and paranoia in a world of drug addiction.
The protagonist is Bob Arctor, member of a household of drug users, who is also living a double life as an undercover police agent assigned to spy on Arctor's household. Arctor shields his identity ... (Wikipedia)
The Black Dahlia
by James Ellroy
A 1940s Los Angeles detective story, exploring the depths of a gruesome unsolved murder.
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 Hunter
by Richard Stark
A criminal mastermind navigates a dangerous web of crime and violence to carry out the perfect heist.
Double-crossed, shot, and left for dead — by his wife. The thriller that introduces Parker. “A brilliant invention”. Played by Lee Marvin in the John Boorman movie. “The funnies call it the ... (Goodreads)
The Long Goodbye
by Raymond Chandler
A hard-boiled detective's journey to unravel the truth behind a mysterious disappearance.
The novel opens outside a club called the Dancers. It is late October or early November. No year is given for the events but internal evidence and the publication date of the novel place them between ... (Wikipedia)
No Country for Old Men
by Cormac McCarthy
A gripping tale of violence and pursuit in Texas' desolate landscape.
The plot follows the interweaving paths of the three central characters (Llewelyn Moss, Anton Chigurh , and Ed Tom Bell) set in motion by events related to a drug deal gone bad near the ... (Wikipedia)
Farewell, My Lovely
by Raymond Chandler
A hard-boiled detective's adventures as he investigates a complex case of murder and corruption.
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)
The Talented Mr. Ripley
by Patricia Highsmith
A young conman's descent into a life of crime, with deadly consequences.
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)
A Confederacy of Dunces
by John Kennedy Toole
A satirical tale of an eccentric slacker's misadventures in New Orleans.
Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found, here, "A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles ... (Goodreads)
The Big Nowhere
by James Ellroy
A crime noir set in 1950s Los Angeles, unraveling a web of corruption and violence.
The plot is about three characters; L.A. Deputy Sheriff Danny Upshaw investigates a brutal sex murder which becomes a string of killings, working outside the law in his efforts to catch him. Turner ... (Wikipedia)
Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
by Cormac McCarthy
A violent and bloody western epic, exploring the depths of human depravity.
An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, Blood Meridian brilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the "wild west." ... (Barnes & Noble)
Breakfast of Champions
by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
A humorous exploration of life's absurdities, through a madcap journey of a protagonist.
Kilgore Trout is a widely published, but ignored and virtually invisible writer who is invited to deliver a keynote address at a local arts festival in distant Midland City. Dwayne Hoover is a ... (Wikipedia)
Crash
by J.G. Ballard
A dystopian novel exploring the surreal and chaotic landscape of a near-future Los Angeles.
The story is told through the eyes of narrator James Ballard, named after the author himself, but it centers on the sinister figure of Dr. Robert Vaughan, a "former TV-scientist, turned nightmare ... (Wikipedia)
Cat's Cradle
by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
A satirical exploration of human folly, exposing the dangers of unchecked science and technology.
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)
The Complete Stories and Poems
by Edgar Allan Poe
A collection of dark and mysterious stories and poems, exploring the depths of the human condition.
This single volume brings together all of Poe's stories and poems, and illuminates the diverse and multifaceted genius of one of the greatest and most influential figures in American literary ... (Barnes & Noble)
The Devil All the Time
by Donald Ray Pollock
A dark tale of sin and redemption, set in a rural southern town.
The Devil All the Time follows the events and fates of various characters who all carry their own secrets from the past. As the novel progresses the lives of these people converge in unexpected ways. ... (Wikipedia)
Ulysses
by James Joyce
Epic narrative following a day in the life of an Irishman living in Dublin.
It is 8 a.m. Buck Mulligan , a boisterous medical student, calls Stephen Dedalus (a young writer encountered as the principal subject of, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, ) up to the roof of ... (Wikipedia)
Gravity's Rainbow
by Thomas Pynchon
A surreal exploration of war and technology, and their impact on the human spirit.
Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the 20th century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its ... (Goodreads)
The Last Picture Show
by Larry McMurtry
A story of a small town in Texas and the inhabitants, capturing a bygone era.
In 1951 Sonny Crawford and Duane Jackson are high-school seniors and friends in Anarene, Texas , a small declining northern Texas town. Duane is dating Jacy Farrow, who Sonny considers the prettiest ... (Wikipedia)
Strangers on a Train
by Patricia Highsmith
Suspenseful tale of a young man's dangerous encounter with a mysterious stranger.
Architect Guy Haines wants to divorce his unfaithful wife, Miriam, in order to marry the woman he loves, Anne Faulkner. While on a train to see his wife, he meets Charles Anthony Bruno, a ... (Wikipedia)
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
by Philip K. Dick
A sci-fi exploration of the implications of reality-altering technology and the power of corporate greed.
The story begins in a future world where global temperatures have risen so high that in most of the world it is unsafe to be outside without special cooling gear during daylight hours. In a desperate ... (Wikipedia)
True Grit
by Charles Portis
A young girl's quest for justice, accompanied by an aging U.S. Marshall.
The landmark anniversary edition of the #1, New York Times, bestselling classic novel, “an epic and a legend” (,The Washington Post,) Charles Portis has long been acclaimed as one of America’s most ... (Barnes & Noble)
Junky
by William S. Burroughs
A gritty, autobiographical account of a man's descent into the underworld of addiction.
Before his 1959 breakthrough, Naked Lunch , an unknown William S. Burroughs wrote Junky , his first novel. It is a candid eye-witness account of times and places that are now long gone, an ... (Goodreads)
Cathedral
by Raymond Carver
An unexpected encounter changes a man's outlook on life and his relationships.
Raymond Carver’s third collection of stories, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, including the canonical titular story about blindness and learning to enter the very different world of another. These ... (Goodreads)
Something Wicked This Way Comes
by Ray Bradbury
A dark fantasy tale of two boys confronting a mysterious and sinister carnival.
One of Ray Bradbury’s best-known and most popular novels, Something Wicked This Way Comes , now featuring a new introduction and material about its longstanding influence on culture and genre. For ... (Barnes & Noble)
