100 books like In a Lonely Place

Tom Ripley’s obsession with Dickie Greenleaf is so fascinating because it’s real but completely disturbing. I love this book because of Tom and Dickie, two characters who are loveable and hateable at the same time. The first half flew by on account of the setting–France, Italy, summer–it made me feel like I was there enjoying a European holiday with our protagonists. The second half turned everything on its head, and I was exhilarated and terrified all at once.

This story details love manifesting into a disturbing obsession, and this is a particularly interesting topic to explore. I loved the pace of the book (high, great plot) and the development of the characters. It is definitely one of my favorite stories about friendship with a beautiful European backdrop. 

In a tough prostitute named Virginia, escaped convict Timothy Sunblade finds the perfect partner to help execute the perfect crime. The extraordinary relationship between these two makes the book memorable. Sunblade is clear-eyed, thoughtful, disillusioned, sensitive, brutish, self-assured at times, and wavering at others. Virginia is wise, world-weary, sure of herself and what she wants, sometimes crazed like a caged animal, but always strong.

Chaze's atmospheric detail adds depth and presence to the story. The characters' arc is one of darkening fate and inevitable tragedy. Watching their slow descent is like watching a train wreck in slow motion. The characters continue to deepen throughout the story, all the way to the final page, and they stay with you long after you've put the book down.

When news editor Earl Janoth murders his mistress, there's only one witness who can tie him to the crime scene. Janoth doesn't know who the witness is, but he knows everywhere the man went in the 24 hours before the murder, because the murder victim told him before he killed her.

Janoth is determined to find and silence him. He assigns reporter George Stroud to track the man down, not knowing that Stroud himself is the man he's looking for. Stroud is forced to assemble a team to hunt himself, knowing that when he's found, he'll be killed.

This is the best-plotted book I've ever read, both in concept and execution. Little details sprinkled through early chapters of the book keep coming back to have major significance as the noose tightens around Stroud.

I think The Hot Spot is perhaps the best of several noir novels by Charles Williams, a writer who deserves to be better known. 

Originally published as Hell Hath No Fury, The Hot Spot, well filmed under that title in 1990, chillingly illustrates the claimed truth of the proverb about a woman scorned. As readers, we cannot help but like Harry Madox, a clever but semi-sleazy used-car salesman who robs a bank in a small Texas town and sleeps with his boss’s boozy wife before falling in love with a younger, more innocent woman.

Then Harry learns to his dismay that the boss’s wife is determined to keep him from having the things he now realizes he really wants. Re-reading this novel, I always root for Harry to escape from the deep pit he has dug for himself, and I keep turning the pages, hoping he will.

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.

My mother was a very troubled young woman. The age difference between us was only 17 years, which meant that by the time I was a teenager, she was still young. Her alcoholism, broken marriages, and difficult relationships with her own family, including my Irish grandmother who effectively raised me and her two husbands, first my biological father and then my step-father, all made for a very challenging emotional landscape for a sensitive only child.

This seminal debut novel in what is now considered one of the finest crime series of all time. It features the series detective Harry Bosch who had a similar, troubled relationship with his own mother. Her death haunts Harry and influences his entire life and career, as the death of my mother does mine.

There’s no list I can create in my head about haunting locations that doesn’t include this book. One of the most interesting aspects of horror novels that take place in a vivid setting is that they draw you in and both make you wish you could visit the location while at the same time thanking all that’s good and holy that you’re not there. That’s what The Shining did for me when I read it. 

The Overlook hotel is larger than life, treacherous, and inviting, and King does an incredible job at maintaining the high-pitched hum of tension from the moment the Torrances walk through its doors.

What I really love about this novel is the voice of the main character, Ezekial “Easy” Rollins. Easy is not your typical P.I. A recently fired machinist in post-war Los Angeles, he’s just a guy trying to pay his bills. But he’s also a black man from the South trying to survive in a white, west-coast world. When a white gangster hires him to find a missing girl, Easy senses that he’s in extreme danger, but he has no choice but to take the job.

Told in the first-person, this book captures all of Easy’s doubt, dread, and defiance as he unravels the mystery.

Robin Robertson’s noir narrative The Long Take might seem like an unusual choice for this list.

Essentially a long noir poem, The Long Take concerns Walker, a Canadian veteran of D-Day with acute PTSD who finds life unraveling in the urban landscapes he inhabits after the war.

With a poet’s precision, Robertson follows Walker as he moves from city to city, taking it all in. Homelessness, crime, race—nothing is spared.

Why, you’d think you were in a 40s film noir, reading about it all, and then you find Walker on the streets of LA in 1948 seeing some of those very films being shot, films like Act of Violence and Criss Cross.

An outstanding achievement, The Long Take is a wholly original work of art.

James Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia needs no introduction to the serious crime fiction fan.

Like Hughes’ novel, we’re in postwar LA, in 1947, following the murder of Elizabeth Short, a young Hollywood hopeful whose disemboweled body is found one morning in a vacant lot.

Ellroy had authored six previous novels by this point, but it’s here, with The Black Dahlia, that many, myself included, find his style truly begins to shine.

It’s a standout of neo-noir literature that stuns with its prose, characters, and plotting. You’ll study it, you’ll re-read it, and you’ll memorize passages from it, so you better get one for the bookshelf.