73 Books Like The Underground Man

I was shaken to my core not only by Capote’s character study of two different yet partnered killers but also by his behind-the-scenes depiction of the death penalty process. For the first time, I began to see how capital punishment affects all those involved in its machinations.

Memoirs don’t often feature mysteries, but Elroy, known for tough, cynical crime novels such as L.A. Confidential, centers his around his obsession with the unsolved murder of his mother in 1958 when Elroy was ten. With allusions to the famous Blue Dahlia case, Elroy writes with brutal frankness about his own pathologies and his weirdly loving relationship with his neglectful, alcoholic father. If nothing else, this absorbing book—hard to read and equally hard to put down—solves the mystery of why Elroy and his novels come off as so creepy.

This book is one of my favorite mysteries of all time. It addresses one of the great unsolved mysteries in English history: Did Richard III kill the princes in the tower? Tey’s sleuth, Alan Grant, is a dogged investigator, and, in the hospital with a broken leg, he treats this historical mystery like a contemporary murder. His step-by-step investigation pulled me in and convinced me that Richard Plantagenet has been mistreated by history.

Miss Tey is so convincing that she inspired me to write the (very innocent) ghost of Richard III into one of my own mystery novels after the monarch’s body was found under a Midlands car park in 2012.

Like so many, I’m addicted to this series. Often imitated, never surpassed, Simenon is perhaps the only mystery writer to be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and was considered by some contemporaries to be the greatest French novelist of his time. Don’t let that put you off. These are great mysteries with an indelible sense of time and place. If the Sherlock Holmes stories can transport me to Victorian London, I can as easily take an absorbing mid-20th century trip to the underside of Paris with Inspector Jules Maigret.

These police procedurals offer unforgettable characters and deep psychological insight. Maigret and the Bum is perhaps my favorite. The bum of the title is a vagrant who has been beaten nearly to death on the banks of the Seine. As Maigret investigates the crime, he finds that the victim was once a highly respected doctor, dedicated to helping the… show more.

I not only loved this book (and all of Ross Macdonald’s writing) but he wrote his only screenplay for me as a producer in Hollywood, based on this book, The Instant Enemy. Working with him closely on this book taught me a great deal about writing complicated character-driven thrillers. He was a master at that, and it was an extraordinary education for me.

Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer books were my introduction to the American private-detective novel. Macdonald’s work is psychologically and morally complex, with the sins of previous generations cascading through time to horrific, homicidal effects on Archer’s clients.

In Sleeping Beauty, Archer tries to help a wealthy family with more trouble than any single family should have to deal with—including a missing girl, an oil spill, a ransom demand, and a corpse floating off a private beach. As Archer works his case, he untangles long-lost memories, the results of arrogant decisions, and the pained, twisted relations between parents and children. Sleeping Beauty is gritty and taut. Terrific detective fiction.

If there is one central defining quality of noir crime fiction, it is the main character’s struggle to preserve his moral center in a fundamentally corrupt and evil world. The best P.I. novels are able to render this kind of character in brushstrokes that are both beautiful and subtle.

One of my favorites is Ross Macdonald’s Lew Archer, first introduced in this novel. When Archer is hired to find a missing rich guy in a tony, Southern California beach town, he finds himself knee-deep in violence, greed, and deceit, uncertain of who is guilty, who he can trust, and even who is worth saving. A moving target, indeed.

Like other private detectives, LA-based Lew Archer sees too much—too much bad or at least questionable behavior. Here, it seems to take the form of a runaway—a rich kid who has “escaped” confinement from his exclusive 60’s reform school. Despite his lack of style and color, Archer acts confident he’ll find him. The only problem: The parents—his client—aren’t helping him very much.  

His disappearance case threatens to disappear, providing an especially clever irony and supporting what I believe is author Macdonald’s favorite insight: The problem begins and ends in the family. The only question is, with all the darkness the parents create and Archer encounters, will he see enough to solve the case? I love this story, in part, becomes it’s more noir than any other Lew Archer story. 

Ross MacDonald is one of the classic detective series that features a damaged leading character who finds more trouble than he knows. Many people have told us our writing style is similar to his. If you want to read classic noir, read this book. His books are hidden gems that beg to be discovered.

This twisty, hypnotic story by the great Ross Macdonald focuses on the dark side of the Hollywood dream.

Private detective Lew Archer is drawn into the search for a missing woman, Hester Campbell-Wall, who seemed poised on the cusp of success via an oblique connection to Helio-Graff Studios when she vanished after a frantic phone call to her estranged husband.

Against his better judgment Archer agrees to look for Hester, a quest that pits him against the powerful and corrupt studio head, Simon Graff. The book is full of complex characters who are neither all good nor all bad, despite their acts of betrayal, deceit, and even murder.

That’s what makes them so poignant and believable: in various ways, they are all broken by dreams that didn’t come true.