Books like 'The Spook Who Sat by the Door'
Readers who enjoyed The Spook Who Sat by the Door by Sam Greenlee also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical mystery 20th century psychological historical-fiction classics politics literary-fiction espionage satire
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Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King
Rated: 4.48 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsAndy Dufresne, a banker, was convicted of killing his wife and her lover and sent to Shawshank Prison. He maintains his innocence over the decades he spends at Shawshank during which time he forms a friendship with "Red", a fellow inmate.Source: stephenking... -
![The Man Who Loved Dogs by Leonardo Padura]()
The Man Who Loved Dogs by Leonardo Padura
Rated: 4.45 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsA gripping novel about the assassination of Leon Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940In The Man Who Loved Dogs, Leonardo Padura brings a noir sensibility to one of the most fascinating and complex political narratives of the past hundred years: the assassination of Leon Trotsky by Ramón Mercader... -
![And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie]()
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Rated: 4.27 of 5 stars · 86 ratingsFirst, there were ten—a curious assortment of strangers summoned as weekend guests to a little private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire unknown to all of them, is nowhere to be found. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they're unwilling to reveal—and a secret that will seal their fate. For each has been marked for murder... -
![The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth, Фредерик Форсайт]()
The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth, Фредерик Форсайт
Rated: 4.26 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsLibrarian note: an alternate cover for this edition can be found here.The Jackal. A tall, blond Englishman with opaque, gray eyes. A killer at the top of his profession. A man unknown to any secret service in the world. An assassin with a contract to kill the world's most heavily guarded man.One man with a rifle who can change the course of history... -
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![And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie]()
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Rated: 4.26 of 5 stars · 87 ratingsFirst, there were ten—a curious assortment of strangers summoned as weekend guests to a little private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire unknown to all of them, is nowhere to be found. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they're unwilling to reveal—and a secret that will seal their fate. For each has been marked for murder... -
![Chess Story by Stefan Zweig]()
Chess Story by Stefan Zweig
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsChess Story, also known as The Royal Game, is the Austrian master Stefan Zweig's final achievement, completed in Brazilian exile and sent off to his American publisher only days before his suicide in 1942. It is the only story in which Zweig looks at Nazism, and he does so with characteristic emphasis on the psychological...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction politics 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
![The Key by Kathryn Hughes]()
The Key by Kathryn Hughes
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFrom the #1 bestselling author of The Letter Kathryn Hughes comes The Key, an unforgettable story of a heartbreaking secret that will stay with you for ever. 'Riveting' Lesley Pearse on The Letter. 'Gripping' Good Housekeeping on The Secret. 1956 It's Ellen Crosby's first day at work as a student nurse at Ambergate County Lunatic Asylum... -
![Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett]()
Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 40 ratingsOne enemy spy knows the secret to the Allies' greatest deception, a brilliant aristocrat and ruthless assassin -- code name: "The Needle" -- who holds the key to ultimate Nazi victory. Only one person stands in his way: a lonely Englishwoman on an isolated island, who is beginning to love the killer who has mysteriously entered her life...Categorized as:
classics crime espionage historical-fiction political-intrigue 20th-century action-adventure adult -
![Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada, Geoff Wilkes]()
Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada, Geoff Wilkes
Rated: 4.23 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsInspired by a true story, Hans Fallada's Alone in Berlin is the gripping tale of an ordinary man's determination to defy the tyranny of Nazi rule. This Penguin Classics edition contains an afterword by Geoff Wilkes, as well as facsimiles of the original Gestapo file which inspired the novel. Berlin, 1940, and the city is filled with fear...Categorized as:
classics crime historical-fiction literary-fiction politics 20th-century action-adventure adult -
![Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers]()
Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThe dons of Harriet Vane's alma mater, the all-female Shrewsbury College, Oxford, have invited her back to attend the annual Gaudy celebrations. However, the mood turns sour when someone begins a series of malicious acts including poison-pen messages, obscene graffiti and wanton vandalism. Harriet asks her old friend Wimsey to investigate...Categorized as:
classics crime historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic 20th-century adult amateur-sleuth -
![Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey]()
Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThe magnificent second novel from the legendary author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Following the astonishing success of his first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey wrote what Charles Bowden calls "one of the few essential books written by an American in the last half century...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic 20th-century adult audiobook book -
![The Company by Robert Littell]()
The Company by Robert Littell
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe Barnes & Noble ReviewSince the publication of his 1973 debut thriller, The Defection of A. J. Lewinter, Robert Littell has evolved into one of the most credible, consistently interesting espionage novelists of the modern era... -
![The Murderess by Alexandros Papadiamantis]()
The Murderess by Alexandros Papadiamantis
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe Murderess is a bone-chilling tale of crime and punishment with the dark beauty of a backwoods ballad. Set on the dirt-poor Aegean island of Skiathos, it is the story of Hadoula, an old woman living on the margins of society and at the outer limits of respectability. Hadoula knows about herbs and their hidden properties, and women come to her when they need help...Categorized as:
classics crime historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book -
![Fail-Safe by Eugene Burdick, Harvey Wheeler]()
Fail-Safe by Eugene Burdick, Harvey Wheeler
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSomething has gone wrong. A group of American bombers armed with nuclear weapons is streaking past the fail-safe point, beyond recall, and no one knows why. Their destination—Moscow.In a bomb shelter beneath the White House, the calm young president turns to his Russian translator and says, "I think we are ready to talk to Premier Kruschchev... -
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![Brodeck by Philippe Claudel]()
Brodeck by Philippe Claudel
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSet in an unnamed time and place, Brodeck blends the familiar and unfamiliar, myth and history into a work of extraordinary power and resonance. Readers of J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace, Bernhard Schlink's The Reader and Kafka will be captivated by Brodeck...Categorized as:
classics crime historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century 21st-century adult audiobook -
![Absent in the Spring by Mary Westmacott, Agatha Christie]()
Absent in the Spring by Mary Westmacott, Agatha Christie
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsReturning from a visit to her daughter in Iraq, Joan Scudamore finds herself unexpectedly alone and stranded in an isolated rest house by flooding of the railway tracks. This sudden solitude compels Joan to assess her life for the first time ever and face up to many of the truths about herself...Categorized as:
classics crime historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book -
![The Seven-Percent Solution by Nicholas Meyer]()
The Seven-Percent Solution by Nicholas Meyer
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsFirst discovered and then painstakingly edited and annotated by Nicholas Meyer, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution relates the astounding and previously unknown collaboration of Sigmund Freud with Sherlock Holmes, as recorded by Holmes's friend and chronicler, Dr. John H. Watson... -
![Qb VII by Leon Uris]()
Qb VII by Leon Uris
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsIn Queen’s Bench Courtroom Number Seven, famous author Abraham Cady stands trial. In his book The Holocaust—born of the terrible revelation that the Jadwiga Concentration Camp was the site of his family’s extermination—Cady shook the consciousness of the human race. He also named eminent surgeon Sir Adam Kelno as one of Jadwiga’s most sadistic inmate/doctors... -
![The Spy Who Came In from the Cold by John le Carré]()
The Spy Who Came In from the Cold by John le Carré
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsIn this classic, John le Carre's third novel and the first to earn him international acclaim, he created a world unlike any previously experienced in suspense fiction... -
![Random Harvest by James Hilton]()
Random Harvest by James Hilton
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsCharles Rainier, a prosperous Briton, loses his memory as a result of shellshock in the First World War...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction realistic 20th-century action-adventure adult amnesia -
![Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton]()
Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsHamilton captures the edgy, obsessive and eventually murderous mindset of a romantically frustrated British man in this WWII-era novel. London 1939, and in the grimy publands of Earls Court, George Harvey Bone is pursuing a helpless infatuation with Netta who is cool, contemptuous and hopelessly desirable to George...Categorized as:
classics crime historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book -
![The Tie That Binds by Kent Haruf]()
The Tie That Binds by Kent Haruf
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsFrom the bestselling author of , is a powerfully eloquent tribute to the arduous demands of rural America, and of the tenacity of the human spirit.Colorado, January 1977. Eighty-year-old Edith Goodnough lies in a hospital bed, IV taped to the back of her hand, police officer at her door. She is charged with murder...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc realistic urban 20th-century adult -
![A Rose for Emily and Other Stories by William Faulkner, Washington Irving]()
A Rose for Emily and Other Stories by William Faulkner, Washington Irving
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsEmily is a member of a family in the antebellum Southern aristocracy; after the Civil War, the family has fallen on hard times... -
![Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose]()
Twelve Angry Men by Reginald Rose
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsA landmark American drama that inspired a classic film and a Broadway revival—featuring an introduction by David MametA blistering character study and an examination of the American melting pot and the judicial system that keeps it in check, Twelve Angry Men holds at its core a deeply patriotic faith in the U.S. legal system... -
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![You Let Me Go by Eliza Graham]()
You Let Me Go by Eliza Graham
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA secret family history of love, anguish and betrayal.After her beloved grandmother Rozenn’s death, Morane is heartbroken to learn that her sister is the sole inheritor of the family home in Cornwall—while she herself has been written out of the will... -
![Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith]()
Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsA triple murder in a Moscow amusement center: three corpses found frozen in the snow, faces and fingers missing. Chief homicide investigator Arkady Renko is brilliant, sensitive, honest, and cynical about everything except his profession. To identify the victims and uncover the truth, he must battle the KGB, FBI, and New York police as he performs the impossible--and tries to stay alive doing it... -
![The Mansion by William Faulkner]()
The Mansion by William Faulkner
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe Mansion completes Faulkner’s great trilogy of the Snopes family in the mythical county of Yoknapatawpha, Mississippi, which also includes The Hamlet and The Town. Beginning with the murder of Jack Houston, and ending with the murder of Flem Snopes, it traces the downfall of this indomitable post-bellum family, who managed to seize control of the town of Jefferson within a generation... -
![The Between by Tananarive Due]()
The Between by Tananarive Due
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWhen Hilton was just a boy, his aged grandmother saved him from drowning by pulling him out of a treacherous ocean current, sacrificing her life for his. Now, thirty years later, Hilton begins to think his borrowed time is running out... -
![The Missing Daughter by Emily Gunnis]()
The Missing Daughter by Emily Gunnis
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsFrom the author of the runaway bestseller The Girl in the Letter comes a heartwrenching, twisting novel of betrayal, tragedy and a shocking family secret buried for decades.1960. Thirteen-year-old Rebecca lives in fear of her father’s temper. As a storm batters Seaview Cottage one night, she hears a visitor at the door and a violent argument ensues...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book coming-of-age drama -
![Mysteries by Knut Hamsun]()
Mysteries by Knut Hamsun
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsMysteries (1892) is the story of Johan Nilsen Nagel, a mysterious stranger who suddenly turns up in a small Norwegian town one summer-and just as suddenly disappears. Nagel is a complete outsider, a sort of modern Christ treated in a spirit of near parody...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century anthologies europe existentialism fiction -
![Cape Fear by John D. MacDonald]()
Cape Fear by John D. MacDonald
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsHow far would you go to save your family? In John D. MacDonald's iconic masterwork of suspense, the inspiration for not one but two Hollywood hits, a mild-mannered family is tormented by an obsessed criminal--and with the authorities powerless to protect them, they must take the law into their own hands...Categorized as:
classics crime literary-fiction realistic 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
![The Edge of Lost by Kristina McMorris]()
The Edge of Lost by Kristina McMorris
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 25 ratingsNEW YORK TIMES & USA TODAY BESTSELLEROn a cold night in October 1937, searchlights cut through the darkness around Alcatraz. A prison guard’s only daughter—one of the youngest civilians who lives on the island—has gone missing. Tending the warden’s greenhouse, convicted bank robber Tommy Capello waits anxiously...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book coming-of-age -
![The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin]()
The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsAlive and hiding in South America, the fiendish Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele gathers a group of former colleagues for a horrifying project—the creation of the Fourth Reich. Barry Kohler, a young investigative journalist, gets wind of the project and informs famed Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman, but before he can relay the evidence, Kohler is killed...Categorized as:
classics crime espionage historical-fiction literary-fiction politics 20th-century action-adventure -
![Poirot quitte la scène by Agatha Christie]()
Poirot quitte la scène by Agatha Christie
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsArthritic and immobilized, Poirot calls on his old friend Captain Hastings to join him at Styles to be the eyes and ears that will feed observations to Poirot's still razor sharp mind. Though aware of the criminal's identity, Poirot will not reveal it to the frustrated Hastings, and dubs the nameless personage 'X'...Categorized as:
classics crime historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook -
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![Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler]()
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsDarkness at Noon (from the German: Sonnenfinsternis) is a novel by the Hungarian-born British novelist Arthur Koestler, first published in 1940. His best-known work tells the tale of Rubashov, a Bolshevik 1917 revolutionary who is cast out, imprisoned and tried for treason by the Soviet government he'd helped create...Categorized as:
classics crime historical-fiction literary-fiction politics satire social-commentary 20th-century -
![Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford]()
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 43 ratingsIn 1986, Henry Lee joins a crowd outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle's Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has discovered the belongings of Japanese families who were sent to internment camps during World War II...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc politics realistic 20th-century 21st-century -
![The Alienist by Caleb Carr]()
The Alienist by Caleb Carr
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsWhen The Alienist was first published in 1994, it was a major phenomenon, spending six months on the New York Times bestseller list, receiving critical acclaim, and selling millions of copies. This modern classic continues to be a touchstone of historical suspense fiction for readers everywhere.The year is 1896. The city is New York...Categorized as:
classics crime historical-fiction literary-fiction urban 20th-century action-adventure adult -
![Fifth Business by Robertson Davies]()
Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsRamsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and myth collide. As Ramsay tells his story, it begins to seem that from boyhood, he has exerted a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious, influence on those around him... -
![Embers by Sándor Márai]()
Embers by Sándor Márai
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsAs darkness settles on a forgotten castle at the foot of the Carpathian mountains, two men sit down to a final dinner together. They have not seen one another in forty-one years. At their last meeting, in the company of a beautiful woman, an unspoken act of betrayal left all three lives shattered - and each of them alone... -
![Libra by Don DeLillo]()
Libra by Don DeLillo
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFrom the author of White Noise (winner of the National Book Award) and Zero KIn this powerful, eerily convincing fictional speculation on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Don DeLillo chronicles Lee Harvey Oswald's odyssey from troubled teenager to a man of precarious stability who imagines himself an agent of history... -
![Forest of the Hanged by Liviu Rebreanu]()
Forest of the Hanged by Liviu Rebreanu
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsDuring the First World War, just behind the eastern front, there was a forest, where Austrians and Hungarians used to hang deserters. To this place came Apostol Bologa, a young Romanian officer eager to serve his country. Born in a Romanian region of Transylvania which was then under Hungarian rule, he had naturally enough joined the Austro-Hungarian army...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book death -
![The Cold Six Thousand by James Ellroy]()
The Cold Six Thousand by James Ellroy
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn this savagely audacious novel, James Ellroy plants a pipe bomb under the America in the 1960s, lights the fuse, and watches the shrapnel fly. On November 22, 1963 three men converge in Dallas. Their job: to clean up the JFK hit’s loose ends and inconvenient witnesses. They are Wayne Tedrow, Jr., a Las Vegas cop with family ties to the lunatic right; Ward J... -
![The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier]()
The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsBy chance, John and Jean--one English, the other French--meet in a provincial railway station. Their resemblance to each other is uncanny, and they spend the next few hours talking and drinking - until at last John falls into a drunken stupor. It's to be his last carefree moment, for when he wakes, Jean has stolen his identity and disappeared...Categorized as:
classics crime historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
![The Summer of Katya by Trevanian]()
The Summer of Katya by Trevanian
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn the golden summer of 1914, Jean-Marc Montjean, recently graduated from medical school, comes to the small French village of Salies to assist the village physician. His first assignment is to treat the brother of a beautiful woman named Katya Treville. As he and her family become friendly, he realizes they are haunted by an old, dark secret . .Categorized as:
crime espionage historical-fiction literary-fiction political-intrigue satire 20th-century adult -
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![Winter Journey by Diane Armstrong]()
Winter Journey by Diane Armstrong
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsHalina Shore is a Polish-born forensic dentist who lives in Australia. When she travels to Poland to take part in the investigation of a war crime, she finds herself at the centre of a bitter struggle in a community that has been divided by a grim legacy... -
![Famous Last Words by Timothy Findley]()
Famous Last Words by Timothy Findley
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIn the final days of the Second World War, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley scrawls his desperate account on the walls and ceilings of his ice-cold prison high in the Austrian Alps. Officers of the liberating army discover his frozen, disfigured corpse and his astonishing testament - the sordid truth that he alone possessed...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction literary-fiction politics 20th-century adult alternate-history book -
![Pick-Up by Charles Willeford]()
Pick-Up by Charles Willeford
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsHe Holed Up With a Helpless LushProwling the grimy streets of San Francisco low-life, Helen is a beautiful, sensuous drunk - and a pathetically easy pick-up. Harry just wants to help, but before long he and Helen are both adrift in a sea of alcohol - until Harry conceives the ultimate crime.. -
![In My Father's House by Ernest J. Gaines]()
In My Father's House by Ernest J. Gaines
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA compelling novel of a man brought to reckon with his buried past...In St. Adrienne, a small black community in Louisiana, Reverend Phillip Martin—a respected minister and civil rights leader—comes face to face with the sins of his youth in the person of Robert X, a young, unkempt stranger who arrives in town for a mysterious "meeting" with the Reverend...Categorized as:
black-mc classics crime historical-fiction literary-fiction poc-mc 20th-century adult -
![Deadly Communion by Frank Tallis]()
Deadly Communion by Frank Tallis
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsDetective Inspector Oskar Reinhardt finds that young women are being slain in an unnerving—and ingenious—manner, with a small, almost undetectable, hat pin. For Dr. Max Liebermann, the killer is unique in the annals of psychopathology, one who murders in the midst of consensual love...Categorized as:
urban historical-fiction crime literary-fiction europe western-central-europe austria mystery -
![Angel Street: A Victorian Thriller in Three Acts by Patrick Hamilton]()
Angel Street: A Victorian Thriller in Three Acts by Patrick Hamilton
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsA Broadway hit first produced on the West End under the title Gaslight and filmed twice, Angel Street tells the story of the Manninghams who live on Angel Street in 19th Century London. As the curtain rises, all appears the essence of Victorian tranquility. It is soon apparent however, that Mr...
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