Books like “The Maltese Falcon”

What to read after “The Maltese Falcon” by Dashiell Hammett: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
The Big Sleep
Raymond Chandler · 1939
From the same world: “Noir”
Private detective Philip Marlowe is hired by a dying general to deal with a blackmailer, and the case leads him through a family of drifters and gamblers to a missing man and a tangle of secrets. He keeps working even when the general tells him to stop.
2
The Postman Always Rings Twice
James M. Cain · 1934
From the same world: “Noir”
A drifter called Frank takes a job at a roadside diner and begins an affair with the owner's unhappy wife. Their plan to be together, a murder made to look like an accident, sets off a chain of events that neither of them can control.
3
Double Indemnity
James M. Cain · 1936
From the same world: “Noir”
Insurance salesman Walter Huff is drawn to Phyllis, the alluring wife of a client, and agrees to help her kill her husband and make it look like an accident. Their scheme is carefully plotted, but the company's claims investigator begins to notice details that do not add up.
4
Nightmare Alley
William Lindsay Gresham · 1946
From the same world: “Noir”
Stan Carlisle works the carnival, watching the geek at the bottom of the show and vowing never to fall that low. Clever and ambitious, he moves from a mind-reading act to spiritualist con, fleecing the rich, until his own past catches up with him.
5
Strangers on a Train
Patricia Highsmith · 1950
From the same world: “Noir”
On a train, a charming stranger proposes an idea to architect Guy Haines: each man could murder the person ruining the other's life, since no one would suspect them. Guy dismisses it as a joke, until the other man acts on the plan and pulls him into a nightmare of guilt that neither can escape.
6
Brighton Rock
Graham Greene · 1938
From the same world: “Noir”
- Noir
- Betrayal
Seventeen-year-old Pinkie Brown runs a small gang on the Brighton seafront and commits a murder to hold his position. A cheerful, persistent woman who barely knew the victim decides to find out what really happened, closing in on a boy who believes he is beyond ordinary justice.
7
Storm Front
Jim Butcher · 2000
From the same world: “Noir”
- Noir
Harry Dresden is Chicago's only professional wizard, listed in the phone book and usually broke. When the police consult him on a double murder, he finds a sorcerer using black magic in a city where vampires and crime bosses all want a piece of the investigation.
8
The Talented Mr. Ripley
Patricia Highsmith · 1955
From the same world: “Noir”
- Noir
Tom Ripley, a poor young man in New York, is sent to Italy by a rich shipbuilder to bring home his son Dickie. Instead Tom is drawn into Dickie's comfortable world and, when it is threatened, does whatever it takes to keep it.
9
The Killer Inside Me
Jim Thompson · 1952
From the same world: “Noir”
- Noir
Deputy sheriff Lou Ford seems like an ordinary small-town man, but his mild manner hides a violence he has carried since childhood. When old secrets and a woman from his past resurface, his two selves begin to pull him toward more killing.
10
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Philip K. Dick · 1968
From the same world: “Noir”
- Noir
- Morally Grey Character
In a dust-choked future, a bounty hunter is paid to retire androids that have escaped to Earth and passed as human. As he tracks them down he starts to question what makes a life real, and whether he can trust his own memories.
11
Guilty Pleasures
Laurell K. Hamilton · 1993
From the same world: “Noir”
- Noir
Anita Blake raises the dead for a living and executes vampires for the state. When a frightened vampire hires her to find who is murdering the city's undead, her search pulls her into the hardboiled politics of Jean-Claude and the master vampire of St. Louis.
12
The Dry
Jane Harper · 2016
From the same world: “Noir”
- Noir
A federal agent returns to the drought-stricken town he left twenty years ago, for the funeral of a childhood friend believed to have killed his family. Old questions about the death that drove him away surface again while he helps the local police look into a new one.