Books like 'Killer's Choice'
Readers who enjoyed Killer's Choice by Ed McBain also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical mystery thriller crime law-enforcement noir historical-fiction pulp police-procedural hard-boiled
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Five Decembers by James Kestrel
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIn this novel of World War II, an American police detective trapped while trailing a killer overseas struggles to survive with only the help of a total stranger and his daughter, who risk their lives to protect him. December 1941. America teeters on the brink of war, and in Honolulu, Hawaii, police detective Joe McGrady is assigned to investigate a homicide that will change his life forever...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction law-enforcement noir police-procedural pulp thriller 20th-century -
Stories and Early Novels: Pulp Stories / The Big Sleep / Farewell, My Lovely / The High Window by Raymond Chandler
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsIn Raymond Chandler’s hands, the pulp crime story became a haunting mystery of power and corruption, set against a modern cityscape both lyrical and violent. Now Chandler joins the authoritative Library of America series in a comprehensive two-volume set displaying all the facets of his brilliant talent... -
Между строк by Boris Akunin
Rated: 4.63 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsВторой том переносит нас в Японию, 1878 года: ниндзя, гейши, самураи... Это история любви молодого дипломата Эраста Фандорина и роковой красавицы-ниндзя О-Юми, любви, изменившей всю его жизнь и напомнившей ему о себе через многие годы... -
Later Novels and Other Writings: The Lady in the Lake / The Little Sister / The Long Goodbye / Playback / Double Indemnity (screenplay) / Selected Essays and Letters by Raymond Chandler
Rated: 4.42 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsWith humor, along with an unerring sense of dialogue and the telling details of dress and behavior, Raymond Chandler created a distinctive fictional universe out of the dark side of sunlit Los Angeles. In the process, he transformed both crime writing and the American language.Written during the war, The Lady in the Lake (1943) takes Philip Marlowe out of the seamy L.A... -
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Twenty Years Later by Charlie Donlea
Rated: 4.23 of 5 stars · 31 ratingsAvery Mason, host of American Events, knows the subjects that grab a TV audience's attention. Her latest story--a murder mystery laced with kinky sex, tragedy, and betrayal--is guaranteed to be ratings gold. New DNA technology has allowed the New York medical examiner's office to make its first successful identification of a 9/11 victim in years...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction law-enforcement police-procedural thriller adult audiobook book -
Complete Novels: Red Harvest / The Dain Curse / The Maltese Falcon / The Glass Key / The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsComplete in one volume, the five books that created the modern American crime novelIn a few years of extraordinary creative energy, Dashiell Hammett invented the modern American crime novel... -
City on Fire by Don Winslow
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsTwo criminal empires together control all of New England.Until a beautiful woman comes between the Irish and the Italians, launching a war that will see them kill each other, destroy an alliance, and set a city on fire.Danny Ryan yearns for a more “legit” life and a place in the sun. But as the bloody conflict stacks body on body and brother turns against brother, Danny has to rise above himself...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction law-enforcement police-procedural thriller adult book fiction -
Collected Stories by Raymond Chandler
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratings(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)The only complete edition of stories by the undisputed master of detective literature, collected here for the first time in one volume, including some stories that have been unavailable for decades... -
The Shadows of Men by Abir Mukherjee
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsAward-winning crime novelist Abir Mukherjee is back with another brilliant mystery featuring police detective Captain Sam Wyndham and Sergeant Surrender-Not Banerjee, set in 1920s Calcutta.Calcutta, 1923 When a Hindu theologian is found murdered in his home, the city is on the brink of all-out religious war...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction law-enforcement police-procedural thriller adult audiobook book -
The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratings(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)The three classic novels published here in one volume are rich with the crisp prose, subtle characters, and intricate plots that made Dashiell Hammett one of the most admired writers of the twentieth century. A one-time detective and a master of deft understatement, Hammett virtually invented the hard-boiled crime novel... -
The Mobster's Lament by Ray Celestin
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsLike every other mobster, the longer he stayed in the life, the closer he got to a shallow grave . . . New York, 1947. Mob fixer Gabriel Leveson needs to leave this city behind. But his plans to flee are upset when he’s given a job by the boss of all bosses, Frank Costello. A job he can’t turn down . . . Meanwhile, a killing spree in a Harlem flophouse has left an innocent black man on Death Row... -
Murder on the White Cliffs by L.B. Hathaway
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsYou can hunt. But do you really want to find?Bonfire Night, November 1924Posie Parker once failed a client. And now that client is dead.Elsie Moncreiff, a Housekeeper, has fallen from the White Cliffs of England in a howling storm...Categorized as:
historical-fiction crime law-enforcement police-procedural mystery fiction cozy historical -
The Dirty Dozen by Lynda La Plante
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe fifth book in the Sunday Times bestselling Jane Tennison series.April 1980 and Jane is the first female detective to be posted to the Met's renowned Flying Squad, commonly known as the 'Sweeney'. Based at Rigg Approach in East London, they investigate armed robberies on banks, cash in transit and other business premises... -
Eyes of the Predator: The Pickham County Murders by Glenn Trust
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 10 ratings***For Mature Readers*** Eyes scanning, searching, the predator sits motionless in a parking lot. His next victim is only feet away. Within hours a backwater south Georgia county will be rocked by two seemingly unrelated murders that signal the arrival of a serial killer in the rural southland...Categorized as:
crime hard-boiled law-enforcement police-procedural thriller action-adventure adult book -
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The Heretic by Liam McIlvanney
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsSet in 1976, seven years after the murders recounted in Liam McIlvanney’s breakout novel, The Quaker, this new Glasgow noir novel is a standalone mystery featuring serial character, Detective Duncan McCormack.McCormack has returned to Glasgow after a stint with the Metropolitan Police in London. The reason for his return is left a lurking mystery throughout...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction law-enforcement police-procedural thriller noir mystery fiction -
The Bookseller of Inverness by S.G. MacLean
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAfter Culloden, Iain MacGillivray was left for dead on Drumossie Moor. Wounded, his face brutally slashed, he survived only by pretending to be dead as the Redcoats patrolled the corpses of his Jacobite comrades.Six years later, with the clan chiefs routed and the Highlands subsumed into the British state, Iain lives a quiet life, working as a bookseller in Inverness...Categorized as:
historical-fiction crime law-enforcement thriller mystery historical fiction audiobook -
The Big Knockover: Selected Stories and Short Novels by Dashiell Hammett
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsHammett's continental op - tough, tired, intelligent, a snap-brimmed Sir Galahad with a Browning - was the prototype for a whole new tradition of private eye thrillers.Here are ten of his classic suspense stories from the twenties and thirties - selected and introduced by Lillian Hellman... -
A Death in Live Oak by James Grippando
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsFrom the 2017 winner of the Harper Lee Prize for legal fiction comes a powerful and timely story of race, politics, injustice, and murder as shocking and incendiary as today’s headlines...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction law-enforcement police-procedural thriller audiobook book fiction -
The Simple Art of Murder by Raymond Chandler
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsContains Chandler's essay on the art of detective stories and a collection of 8 classic Chandler mysteries... -
Hidden Killers by Lynda La Plante
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe brilliant new crime thriller from the BAFTA-winning writer behind the TV series Prime Suspect and author of Widows, now a major motion picture When WPC Jane Tennison is promoted to the role of Detective Constable in London’s Bow Street CID, she is immediately conflicted...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction law-enforcement police-procedural thriller adult audiobook book -
The Water Rituals by Eva García Sáenz de Urturi, Eva García Sáenz
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsHOW DO YOU UNMASK A KILLER WHO'S SPENT YEARS PREPARING TO HUNT YOU DOWN?A pregnant woman has been murdered in a brutal, ritualistic way: burned, hung, and then placed upside down in a Bronze Age cauldron...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction law-enforcement noir police-procedural thriller 21st-century adult -
The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThis is James Lee Burke's latest mystery featuring Dave Robicheaux. It is also much more than that...Categorized as:
crime hard-boiled historical-fiction law-enforcement noir police-procedural thriller 21st-century -
Nor Will He Sleep: An Inspector McLevy Mystery 4 by David Ashton
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsBASED ON THE LONG-RUNNING BBC RADIO 4 McLEVY DRAMA SERIES ...WHILE THE STREETS OF LONDON HAD SHERLOCK HOLMES, THE DARK ALLEYS OF EDINBURGH HAD INSPECTOR JAMES McLEVY ELEGANT AND CONVINCING' The Times | 'ASHTON IS THE DIRECT HEIR TO ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON' Brian Cox | 'EXCELLENT' The Sherlock Holmes Society | 'DRIPPING WITH MELODRAMA AND DERRING-DO' Herald 1887... -
Murder in Canton by Robert van Gulik
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA.D. 681Murder In Canton takes place in 680 A.D. Judge Dee, recently promoted to Lord Chief Justice, is sent incognito to Canton to investigate the disappearance of a court censor... -
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The Chinese Lake Murders by Robert van Gulik
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA.D. 666The Chinese Lake Murders describes how Judge Dee solves three difficult cases in A.D. 666, shortly after he has been appointed magistrate of Han-yuan."[Robert van Gulik] deftly interweaves three criminal cases involving exotic yet universally recognizable characters, then has his Judge Dee provide a surprising yet most plausible solution...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction law-enforcement police-procedural pulp 20th-century adult book -
Sunset Swing by Ray Celestin
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsLos Angeles. Christmas, 1967. A devil is loose in the City of Angels . . .A young nurse, Kerry Gaudet, travels to the City of Angels desperate to find her missing brother, fearing that something terrible has happened to him: a serial killer is terrorising the city, picking victims at random, and Kerry has precious few leads... -
Nineteen Eighty by David Peace
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsDecember 1980, the Yorkshire Ripper murders his thirteenth victim, while Assistant Chief Constable Peter Hunter struggles even deeper in the mire of a culture tainted with dark and sordid detail to solve one of the country's most hellish crimes... -
The Outfit by Richard Stark
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWhen the Outfit tries to kill him, Parker declares war. Ripping off the syndicate is easy, but going one-on-one with Bronson, the Outfit's big boss, is the hard part. Hard for anyone but Parker, because the entire underworld understands that whatever Parker does -- he does for keep... -
Last Car to Elysian Fields by James Lee Burke
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratings'A lyrical and lovely novel that takes Burke back to the top of the crimewriting tree where he richly belongs' Independent On... -
A Trick of the Light: An Inspector McLevy Mystery 3 by David Ashton
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThe third in David Ashton's series of McLevy books, A Trick of the Light sees McLevy team up with Arthur Conan Doyle to pursue a ruthless killer. It is 1860 and a Confederate officer, Jonathen Sinclair, arrives in Edinburgh with a sheaf of money to purchase a blockade-runner from Clydeside shipbuilders. He is betrayed to the Union forces and brutally shot dead by their secret agents...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction law-enforcement police-procedural thriller adult audiobook book -
The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories by Otto Penzler
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsAn unstoppable anthology of crime stories culled from Black Mask magazine the legendary publication that turned a pulp phenomenon into literary mainstream. Black Mask was the apotheosis of noir. It was the magazine where the first hardboiled detective story, which was written by Carroll John Daly appeared... -
Betrayal at Iga: A Hiro Hattori Novel by Susan Spann
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsAutumn, 1565: After fleeing Kyoto, master ninja Hiro Hattori and Portuguese Jesuit Father Mateo take refuge with Hiro's ninja clan in the mountains of Iga province. But when an ambassador from the rival Koga clan is murdered during peace negotiations, Hiro and Father Mateo must find the killer in time to prevent a war between the ninja clans... -
Peeler by Kevin McCarthy
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsWest Cork. November 1920. The Irish War of Independence rages. The body of a young woman is found brutally murdered on a windswept hillside. A scrap board sign covering her mutilated body reads 'TRATOR'. Traitor...Categorized as:
historical-fiction crime law-enforcement police-procedural mystery audiobook historical fiction -
The Chariots of Calyx by Rosemary Rowe
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsLibertus is in Londinium, at the invitation of the Roman Governor, when news arrives of the brutal murder of Caius Monnius, the city's chief corn-officer. Still reeling from the shock of catching sight of the wife he lost to slavery 20 years earlier, only to lose her again, the ever-inquisitive Libertus is, for once, uninterested in unmasking the murderer...Categorized as:
historical-fiction crime law-enforcement thriller mystery historical fiction roman-empire -
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A Roman Ransom by Rosemary Rowe
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsGlevum, AD 188. Lying in his sick bed, weak and disoriented, Libertus is strictly forbidden visitors. But when Marcus Septimus forces his way in, desperate to speak to the pavement-maker, Libertus knows that something is seriously wrong. Marcus's beloved wife Julia and their baby son have disappeared without a trace...Categorized as:
historical-fiction crime law-enforcement thriller mystery historical fiction roman-empire -
Neon Mirage by Max Allan Collins, Dan John Miller
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsIn 1946 Chicago, Nathan Heller—president of the flourishing A-1 Detective Agency—is hired to protect racing-wire gambling chief James Ragen, who is nonetheless shot down on the streets of Chicago. Not one to take such an affront sitting down, Nate goes after the killer, but he’s in for the biggest surprise of his career... -
The Million Dollar Wound by Max Allan Collins
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsFrom a foxhole on Guadalcanal (shared with Barney Ross) to the glitzy underworld of Hollywood in the '40s, Nate Heller fights his memories and the Mob.Something happened at the Canal, something Heller's blocking out. What he can't block, though, is the wound he received--the "million-dollar wound," the one that got him home...Categorized as:
crime hard-boiled historical-fiction law-enforcement noir 20th-century action-adventure adult -
A Song for the Brokenhearted by William Shaw
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsIn the final chapter of William Shaw's trilogy, Breen and Tozer fight against a powerful member of 1960s London society. London, December 1968. A wounded Detective Sergeant Breen recuperates on Tozer's family farm where he's given the case file for the murder that has haunted Tozer for years: that of her teenage sister...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction law-enforcement police-procedural thriller adult audiobook book -
West on 66 by James H. Cobb
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 9 ratingsA classic noir mystery in the tradition of Elmore Leonard. The location is Route 66 in 1958, where a young L.A. deputy sheriff becomes involved with a mysterious woman, mobsters, and a lost fortune...Categorized as:
crime hard-boiled historical-fiction thriller mystery historical action-adventure military -
An Experiment In Treason by Bruce Alexander
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsSir John Fielding has trailed a packet of controversial letters from London to the colony of Massachusetts. But when the suspect in the theft is found dead, Sir John turns his eye on the possible involvement of Benjamin Franklin...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction law-enforcement police-procedural thriller adult book fiction -
Jack, Knave and Fool by Bruce Alexander
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsIn this fifth Sir John Fielding mystery, the legendary eighteenth-century London judge takes on his most difficult case to date. John Fielding was famous not only as cofounder of London's first police force, the Bow Street Runners, but also as a magistrate of keen intellect, fairness and uncommon detective ability. What made this all the more remarkable was that he was blind...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction law-enforcement police-procedural adult amateur-sleuth book fiction -
True Crime by Max Allan Collins
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsBy the author of The Road To Perdition, this title sees Private Eye Nate Heller trying discover who the gunshot victim was, found next to the Biograph Theatre, the man the FBI confidently identified as John Dillinger. His search for the answer leads him into a confrontation with J. Edgar Hoover... -
The Leper's Return by Michael Jecks
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsWhen a local goldsmith, Godfrey of Harwood, is found brutally murdered in his home, Furnshill and Puttock are called on to investigate. But when rumors begin spreading that patients from a local leper hospital might have been involved in Godfrey's murder, a series of vicious attacks on the unfortunate victims ensues, culminating in a disastrous fire at the hospital... -
Todo lo mejor by César Pérez Gellida
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsUna ciudad separada por un muro y unida por un sanguinario asesino. Dos investigadores que descubrirán que la crueldad no tiene límites.Una historia negra para iniciarse en el género Gellida.Viktor Lavrov es un joven talento perteneciente al KGB destinado en Berlín durante el periodo más crudo de la Guerra Fría... -
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The Chinese Nail Murders by Robert van Gulik
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA.D. 676In the fifth installment of Robert Van Gulik's ancient Chinese mystery series based on historical court records, detective Judge Dee is appointed to the magistrate of Pei-chow - a distant frontier district in the barren north of the ancient Chinese Empire...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction law-enforcement police-procedural adult book fiction historical -
The Chinese Maze Murders by Robert van Gulik
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA.D. 670 Poisoned plums, a cryptic scroll picture, passionate love letters, and a hidden murderer with a penchant for torturing and killing women lead Judge Dee to the heart of the Governor’s garden maze and the answers to three interwoven mysteries... -
The Reckoning by Rennie Airth
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe Second World War has ended, leaving a bruised and fragile peace. But this tranquillity is threatened when a shocking murder takes place in the Sussex countryside. Before long, police experts discover a link to another, earlier, killing hundreds of miles away ..Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction law-enforcement police-procedural thriller 20th-century adult audiobook -
The Best American Noir Of The Century by Otto Penzler, James Ellroy
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIn his introduction, James Ellroy writes, "Noir is the most scrutinized offshoot of the hard-boiled school of fiction…It's the nightmare of flawed souls with big dreams and the precise how and why of the all-time sure thing that goes bad."Ellroy & Penzler mined the past century to find this treasure trove of thirty-nine stories... -
The Galton Case by Ross Macdonald
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAlmost twenty years have passed since Anthony Galton disappeared, along with a suspiciously streetwise bride and several thousand dollars of his family's fortune. Now Anthony's mother wants him back and has hired Lew Archer to find him. What turns up is a headless skeleton, a boy who claims to be Galton's son, and a con game whose stakes are so high that someone is still willing to kill for them...Categorized as:
crime hard-boiled historical-fiction law-enforcement noir pulp thriller 20th-century -
Now You See Them by Elly Griffiths
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe fifth gripping Brighton-based mystery from the bestselling author of the Dr Ruth Galloway series – a must-read for fans of Agatha Christie, cosy crime and TV series such as Grantchester and Midsomer Murders. One after another, young women go missing in Brighton, but who’s to say they didn’t leave of their own free choice?Ten years have passed since the events described in The Vanishing Box...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction law-enforcement police-procedural thriller adult audiobook book
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