Books like The Big Sleep
A private detective in 1930s Los Angeles takes a missing-person case that leads through a web of pornography, murder, and the corruption of the California rich.
Explore books like this on the map12 books for readers of The Big Sleep
The Maltese Falcon
In 1920s San Francisco, private detective Sam Spade is hired by a beautiful woman whose story is a lie, and after his partner is shot, he is drawn into a hunt for a jewelled falcon statue.
Red Harvest
A detective arrives in a mining town controlled by warring gangs and plays them against each other, leaving a trail of bodies that adds up to something like justice.
March Violets
In Berlin in 1936, with the Olympics about to open, Bernie Gunther, a police detective turned private investigator, is hired by a steel magnate to recover a diamond necklace stolen from the safe of his daughter and son-in-law, who died in a fire.
The Galton Case
Lew Archer is hired by the lawyer of Maria Galton, a rich and dying old woman, to find her son Anthony, who ran off with a girl more than twenty years ago and was never heard from again.
Devil in a Blue Dress
In Los Angeles in 1948, Easy Rawlins, a Black war veteran just fired from his job at an aircraft plant, is hired to find a white woman named Daphne Monet.
Black Cherry Blues
Dave Robicheaux, a former New Orleans cop grieving his murdered wife, runs a bait shop in New Iberia with his adopted daughter, until an old friend draws him into trouble with oil men and the mob.
The Chill
Lew Archer is hired by Alex Kincaid, a young man whose bride, Dolly, walked out the day after their wedding, and finds that Dolly was a witness in a murder case years before.
Double Indemnity
Walter Huff, an insurance salesman in Los Angeles, calls at a house to renew a car policy and meets the client's wife, Phyllis, who asks about accident insurance her husband need not know about.
The Friends of Eddie Coyle
A small-time criminal in 1970s Boston tries to sell a truckload of stolen guns, and every conversation he has reveals how the underworld really works.
The Black Dahlia
In 1947 Los Angeles, two police detectives and former boxers are drawn into the case of Elizabeth Short, a young woman found murdered and mutilated in a vacant lot, and the obsession it breeds pulls them into the city's dark heart.
The Black Echo
LAPD detective Harry Bosch recognises the body found in a drainage pipe near the Mulholland Dam as Billy Meadows, who fought beside him as a tunnel rat in Vietnam, and the case leads to a bank vault robbed from below the city and an uneasy partnership with FBI agent Eleanor Wish.
Indemnity Only
V. I. Warshawski, a private investigator in Chicago, is hired by a man calling himself John Thayer to find his son's missing girlfriend, and finds the son shot dead in his apartment instead.