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Recommendations based on The Glass Keyby Dashiell Hammett
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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)
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 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 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)
The Thin Man
by Dashiell Hammett
A retired detective called to investigate a mysterious murder.
The story is set in New York City in December 1932, in the last days of Prohibition. The main characters are a former private detective , Nick Charles and Nora, his clever young wife. Nick, son of a ... (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)
The High Window
by Raymond Chandler
Private detective's desperate hunt for a stolen gem and the mystery behind it.
Private investigator Philip Marlowe is hired by wealthy widow Elizabeth Bright Murdock to recover a missing Brasher Doubloon , a rare and valuable coin. Mrs. Murdock suspects it was stolen by her ... (Wikipedia)
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 Loved One
by Evelyn Waugh
Satirical tale of a young man's journey to a funeral home in Los Angeles.
Sir Ambrose Abercrombie visits housemates Dennis Barlow and Sir Francis Hinsley to express his concern about Barlow's new job and how it reflects on the British enclave in Hollywood, which is also ... (Wikipedia)
The Killer Inside Me
by Jim Thompson
A suspenseful psychological thriller about a small-town sheriff with a dark, violent side.
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)
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
by Philip K. Dick
A famous TV personality wakes up in a world where he is a nobody, hunted by the police.
The novel is set in a dystopian version of 1988, following a Second Civil War which led to the collapse of the United States' democratic institutions. The National Guard ("nats") and US police force ... (Wikipedia)
The Man in the High Castle
by Philip K. Dick
Set in an alternate 1962, a man must confront a dark and oppressive new world order.
It's America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco, the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some twenty ... (Goodreads)
The Black Echo
by Michael Connelly
A former LAPD detective is drawn into a web of mystery and crime as he investigates the death of a Vietnam vet.
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)
Story of the Eye
by Georges Bataille
A surrealist exploration of transgression, sex, and violence.
Story of the Eye consists of several vignettes, centered around the sexual passion existing between the unnamed late adolescent male narrator and Simone, his primary female partner. Within this ... (Wikipedia)
Men Without Women
by Ernest Hemingway
Collection of short stories exploring the lives of men and their struggles with love, loss, and loneliness.
CLASSIC SHORT STORIES FROM THE MASTER OF AMERICAN FICTION First published in 1927, Men Without Women represents some of Hemingway's most important and compelling early writing. In these fourteen ... (Goodreads)
Child of God
by Cormac McCarthy
A violent and disturbing story of a man's descent into depravity.
Set in mountainous Sevier County, Tennessee , in the 1960s, Child of God tells the story of Lester Ballard, a dispossessed, violent man whom the narrator describes as "a child of God much like ... (Wikipedia)
The Final Solution
by Michael Chabon
A retired detective investigates the theft of a parrot and uncovers a deeper mystery involving a mute Jewish boy and his rare stamp collection.
In deep retirement in the English countryside, an eighty-nine-year-old man, vaguely recollected by locals as a once-famous detective, is more concerned with his beekeeping than with his fellow man. ... (Goodreads)
Foundation
by Isaac Asimov
Exploring the possibilities of a galactic empire in a future driven by science and technology.
For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future – to a dark age ... (Goodreads)
Second Foundation
by Isaac Asimov
A quest to find the mysterious force controlling the fate of the galaxy.
Part I is about The Mule 's search for the elusive Second Foundation, with the intent of destroying it. The executive council of the Second Foundation is aware of The Mule's intent and, in the words ... (Wikipedia)
Eye of the Needle
by Ken Follett
A thrilling tale of espionage and wartime romance, set in the chaos of WWII.
In 1940, Henry Faber, a German spy nicknamed 'die Nadel' ('The Needle') due to his trademark weapon being a stiletto , is working at a London railway depot, collecting information on troop movements. ... (Wikipedia)
Skin Tight
by Carl Hiaasen
A man's exploration of revenge and justice against a powerful industrialist.
Dr. Rudy Graveline, M.D., the director of the prestigious Whispering Palms Surgery Center in Bal Harbour , Florida , is a complete fraud who has never been trained or certified in cosmetic surgery . ... (Wikipedia)
The Killing Kind
by John Connolly
A private detective is hired to investigate a series of gruesome murders, but soon realizes he may be dealing with a killer beyond human comprehension.
Troubled ex-cop turned private investigator Charlie Parker returns in the latest “compulsively readable” (,Publishers Weekly,) thriller from #1 internationally bestselling author John Connolly. John ... (Barnes & Noble)
Far From the Madding Crowd
by Thomas Hardy
A pastoral romance of love and redemption, set against the backdrop of 19th century rural England.
An ACE can be found here . Independent and spirited Bathsheba Everdene has come to Weatherbury to take up her position as a farmer on the largest estate in the area. Her bold presence draws three ... (Goodreads)
The Exorcist
by William Peter Blatty
A priest's battle against a powerful demon possessing a young girl.
An elderly Jesuit priest named Father Lankester Merrin is leading an archaeological dig in northern Iraq and is studying ancient relics. After discovering a small statue of the demon Pazuzu (an ... (Wikipedia)
Planetary, Volume 2: The Fourth Man
by Warren Ellis
A team of archaeologists and scientists uncover a secret conspiracy involving a mysterious fourth man.
Warren Ellis improves on his already outstanding stories and characters in the second collection of Planetary: The Fourth Man. While scraping their way through their investigations, the three ... (Goodreads)
IQ
by Joe Ide
A brilliant private investigator solves complex cases in the gang-ridden streets of Los Angeles.
A resident of one of LA's toughest neighborhoods uses his blistering intellect to solve the crimes the LAPD ignores. , East Long Beach. The LAPD is barely keeping up with the neighborhood's high ... (Goodreads)
The Great God Pan
by Arthur Machen
A horror story of a sinister experiment that unleashes a terrifying supernatural creature.
The Great God Pan" is a novella written by Arthur Machen. A version of the story was published in the magazine Whirlwind in 1890, and Machen revised and extended it for its book publication (together ... (Goodreads)
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
by Edgar Allan Poe
A young man's journey on a whaling ship turns into a terrifying adventure of survival and discovery in the Antarctic.
The book comprises a preface, 25 chapters, and an afterword, with a total of around 72,000 words. Arthur Gordon Pym was born on the island of Nantucket , famous for its fishing harbor and whaling . ... (Wikipedia)
The Brothers Karamazov
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A philosophical exploration of morality, faith, and family dynamics among a group of brothers.
The Brothers Karamazov is a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and an exploration of erotic rivalry in a series of triangular love affairs involving the “wicked and sentimental” Fyodor Pavlovich ... (Goodreads)
Nostromo
by Joseph Conrad
A gripping tale of greed and political intrigue in a fictional South American country.
Nostromo is set in the South American country of Costaguana, and more specifically in that country's Occidental Province and its port city of Sulaco. Though Costaguana is a fictional nation, its ... (Wikipedia)
