90 Books Like The Getaway

If Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade served as the model for most private detective protagonists in American books (and movies), Raymond Chandler’s private detective Philip Marlowe offered a fascinating, inside-out variation. Marlowe—especially in this book, which I love as Chandler’s best—seems more analytical than Spade, more passionate than Spade, but just not quite as cool by today’s standards. 

That little loss doesn’t hurt him or this classic, however, which provides the best plot with the most expressive prose of this top 5 private detective novels. Marlowe’s war-torn pal disappears, the guy’s oversexed wife gets murdered, and Marlowe naturally becomes police suspect number one. 

In between the developments, Marlowe makes light: “Mostly I just kill time, and it dies hard.” That’s a clever way to say so long to involvement, but the longest goodbye, the real and permanent one to which the book’s title refers and we sometimes call death—that’s the… show more.

Elroy wrote many other books before he took on this epic noir crime novel (one in a quartet). He made his bones in writing, and it's evident in his skill level, story, and prose. Elroy excels in this novel (and the other three) in voice. And voice is the Big Kahuna in writing, it’s the everything in writing and Elroy has it in spades.

Another great addition to the above is the length (because you don’t want this book to ever end) and that it’s a historical novel that absolutely captures the time period and adds the historical nuance to all the characters.

Another Jim Thompson classic, The Grifters is about a trio of con artists trying to move up from being small-time crooks. They add love and a mother/son relationship into the mix which only makes things worse. The film directed by Stephen Frears is a master-class in acting from Anjelica Huston, Annette Bening, and John Cusak. The scene at the end couldn’t be more shocking as a way to wrap up a noir film. Money is paramount in the world of the grifters, everything else secondary. What could be more noir than that?

In the dark world of hardboiled literature, anything can happen at any time for any reason—or no reason at all. In my view, that makes things easy for this debut novel about an unemployed LA factory worker named Easy Rawlins, and that makes things challenging for the story—for the character—as well. 

A man with money and power offers Easy a job looking for a missing blond-haired, white-skinned beauty. Rawlins faces only two problems: He has no experience as a private detective, and he needs to do the detecting with black skin in a segregated, remarkably unequal 1948 America. 

But I think Mosley has found the perfect genre for his character, one whose tough and humane and even psychologically insightful qualities have enabled him to adjust to, learn from, and survive in a place where laws can break out or disappear, depending on the color of his skin. Rawlins finds it… show more.

One of the great tragedies of the literary world is that Jim Thompson never achieved fame and fortune when he was alive. The NYC literati deemed his books and characters too uncouth and depraved for polite society. His books weren’t populated by well-dressed Robin Hood-type criminals, they were mostly just weak men who followed some good intentions down the road to hell. Frank “Dolly” Dillon epitomizes the Thompson character. An unhappily married door-to-door salesman, he intends to help an underage girl escape her aunt who is pimping her out and holding her captive. Of course, it all goes horribly wrong and ends with Dillon in a cheap hotel with the girl and lots of drugs. The last few pages are the most mind-blowing writing about using drugs I have ever read, even more, impressive since it was written in 1954.

I was introduced to this book through Tavernier’s brilliant adaptation, Clean Slate (Coup de Torchon, 1981). Set in Texas, Thompson’s novel was published in 1964, during the Civil Rights Movement, and it offers a portrait of petty-minded racism in the continuing aftermath of slavery. Tavernier’s adaptation transposes the story to 1930s French colonial West Africa. I remain haunted by the ways the two settings illuminate each other. Tavernier’s blending of a deadly serious historical crisis with touches of comedy—slapstick even—brings both eras and the novel itself to life in enjoyable and instructive ways.

No list of character-driven sci-fi novels is complete without something from Timothy Zahn. Take a hardboiled detective, a mysterious and beautiful assistant, and a nefarious and unknown villain. Now add in trains in space!

This one is a page-turner, and not just because the idea of riding relativistic rails is so fascinating. Zahn excels at writing surprisingly complex characters whose motivations change as the story progresses. I read this entire five-book series from front to back and loved every minute.

Cynicism and fatalism drank heavily together in the hardboiled genre of the private detective novel, but no more so than in this mid-40s book. 

I think they even take refuge in the novel’s title: Build My Gallows High. It tells the embittered tale of Red Bailey, a guy in hiding from private detective work after being exploited by a powerful client and betrayed by the beautiful and manipulative woman Bailey loved. 

Bailey would never go back to those days—until he would. His ex-client finds him and blackmails him into searching for that woman, who was also once that powerful man’s lover.  

I love the way each of the three of them harbor conflicting ideas of how this story will end. That’s perfect—the book’s conflict and bile inspired the creation of what has long been one of the darkest and most celebrated of films noir, Out of the Past.

A treasure trove of noir short fiction, an impressive anthology of  American greed, crime, and comeuppance by some of the genre’s greatest authors including Mickey Spillane, Evan Hunter, Elmore Leonard, Patricia Highsmith, Joyce Carol Oates, Dennis Lehane, Cornell Woolrich, and editor Ellroy. The 39 selected stories are a feast of excellence, a wide-ranging buffet of tasty tales from 1923 to 2007—makes me drool just thinking about a re-read.

This gripping thriller moves between the past and the present to tell the story of Melissa Slade, a woman who seemed to have the perfect life before she was convicted of the murder of her two baby girls. As journalist Jonathan Hunt investigates the case, he has no idea what to believe. Is Melissa a lying and manipulative murderer or an innocent victim? You’ll want to keep turning the pages to find out!