18 books like The Drowning Pool

What to read after The Drowning Pool — books similar to it, matched on shared themes.

The Moving Target

The Moving Target Ross MacDonald · 1950 · ★ 3.9 · 212p · ≈ 7h · Moderate The first book in Ross Macdonald's acclaimed Lew Archer series introduces the detective who redefined the role of the American private eye and gave the crime novel a psychological depth and moral complexity only hinted at before.Like many Southern California millionaires, Ralph Sampson keeps odd company. There's the sun-worshipping holy man whom Sampson once gave his very own mountain; the fading… Shares Archer, Los angeles, California, Private investigators

Stalking the Angel

Stalking the Angel Robert Crais · 1989 · ★ 4.0 · 256p · ≈ 8h · Moderate Meet Elvis Cole, L.A. private eye . . . he quotes Jiminy Cricket and carries a .38. He’s a literate, wisecreacking Vietnam vet who is determined never to grow up. The blonde who walked into Cole’s office was the bestlooking woman he’d seen in weeks. The only thing that kept her from rating a perfect “10” was the briefcase on one arm and the uptight hotel magnate on the other. Bradley Warren had… Shares Los angeles, California, Private investigators

Farewell, My Lovely Raymond Chandler · 1940 · ★ 4.1 · 249p · ≈ 8h · Moderate This is one of Chandler’s most famous crime novels featuring the detective Philip Marlowe, who’s about to give up on a completely routine case when he finds himself in the wrong place at the right time to get caught up in a murder that leads to a ring of jewel thieves, another murder, a fortune-teller, a couple more murders, and more corruption than your average graveyard. Shares Los angeles, Private investigators, Mystery

The chill Ross Macdonald · 1963 · ★ 3.6 · 233p · ≈ 7h · Moderate L'auteure évoque quelques caractéristiques de la femme, selon une approche qui relève davantage de la psychologie. Principaux points: le désir féminin, les rôles dans l'amour, les priorités de l'amour, connaître les principaux traits de sa personnalité, l'amour et la beauté, ce que femme veut: l'amour; la résistance féminine. Shares Archer, Los angeles, California, Private investigators

The Big Sleep

The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler · 1939 · ★ 4.0 · 184p · ≈ 6h · Moderate Philip Marlowe, a private eye who operates in Los Angeles's seamy underside during the 1930s, takes on his first case, which involves a paralyzed California millionaire, two psychotic daughters, blackmail, and murder Shares Los angeles, California, Private investigators, Mystery

Ticktock Dean Koontz · 1996 · ★ 3.8 · 318p · ≈ 10h · Moderate Tommy Phan is a 30-year-old Vietnamese-American detective and novelist living in Southern California, and a chaser of the American Dream. He drives home his brand-new Corvette one day to discover a strange doll on his doorstep. It's a rag doll made entirely of white cloth, with no face or hair or clothes. Where the eyes should be, there are two crossed stitches of black thread. Five sets of… Shares California, Private investigators

The Monkey's Raincoat

The Monkey's Raincoat Robert Crais · 1987 · ★ 4.0 · 256p · ≈ 8h · Moderate When Los Angeles private detective Elvis Cole investigates the disappearance of Ellen Lang's husband and young son, he stumbles into a bizarre nightmare of high-level intrigue, missing drugs, and murder in Hollywood's seamy underworld. Shares Los angeles, California, Private investigators

The high window Raymond Chandler · 1942 · ★ 3.7 · 198p · ≈ 6h · Moderate Fast-talking, trouble-seeking private eye Philip Marlowe is a different kind of detective: a moral man in an amoral world. California in the 1940s and 1950s is as beautiful as a ripe fruit and rotten to the core, and Marlowe must struggle to retain his integrity amidst the corruption he encounters daily. In The High Window, Marlowe starts out on the trail of a single stolen coin and ends up… Shares Los angeles, California, Private investigators

The Last Detective

The Last Detective Robert Crais · 2003 · ★ 4.3 · 302p · ≈ 10h · Moderate Elvis Cole is back...With his acclaimed bestsellers, *Hostage* (a New York Times Notable Book) and *Demolition Angel*, Robert Crais drew raves for his unstoppable pacing, edgy characterizations, and cinematic prose. Now, in *The Last Detective*, Crais returns to his signature character, Los Angeles private investigator Elvis Cole, in a masterful page-turner that probes the meaning of family and… Shares Los angeles, Private investigators, Mystery

Strega

Strega Andrew Vachss · 1987 · ★ 4.0 · 293p · ≈ 9h · Moderate Andrew Vachss's implacable private eye has a new client, Strega. She wants Burke to find an obscene photograph--and that search will take him into the ocean that flows just beneath the city, an ocean whose currents are flesh and money, the anguish of children and the pleasure of twisted adults. It is a place that Burke can visit only at the risk of his sanity and his life. But between the power… Shares Private investigators, Mystery

When the Sacred Ginmill Closes

When the Sacred Ginmill Closes Lawrence Block · 1986 · ★ 4.0 · 261p · ≈ 8h · Moderate In the dark days, in a sad and lonely place, ex-cop Matt Scudder is drinking his life away -- and doing "favors" for pay for his ginmill cronies. But when three such assignments flow together in dangerous and disturbing ways, he'll need to change his priorities from boozing to surviving. Shares Private investigators, Mystery

The case of the haunted husband Erle Stanley Gardner · 1941 · ★ 3.9 · 290p · ≈ 9h · Moderate Shares Los angeles, California, Mystery with this book.

The case of the lame canary Erle Stanley Gardner · 1937 · ★ 4.0 · 255p · ≈ 8h · Moderate helyesírás címben Shares Los angeles, California, Mystery

Kingdom of Bones

Kingdom of Bones James Rollins · 2021 · 448p · ≈ 14h · Moderate From #1 New York Times bestselling author James Rollins, the latest riveting, deeply imaginative thriller in the Sigma Force series, told with his trademark blend of cutting-edge science, historical mystery, and pulse-pounding action.It begins in Africa . . .A United Nations relief team in a small village in the Congo makes an alarming discovery. An unknown force is leveling the evolutionary… Shares Mystery

Deadly Gamble

Deadly Gamble Kate Parker Shares Mystery with this book.

The Christmas Guest

The Christmas Guest Peter Swanson “Delicious…I defy you to stop reading The Christmas Guest once you begin.” — New York Times Book ReviewNew York Times bestselling author Peter Swanson pens a spectacularly spine-chilling novella in which an American art student in London is invited to join a classmate for the holidays at Starvewood Hall, her family’s Cotswold manor house. But behind the holly and pine boughs, secrets are… Shares Mystery

Deadly Remains

Deadly Remains Kate Ellis · 2025 · 368p · ≈ 12h · Moderate Million-copy bestselling author Kate Ellis returns with the new mystery in the DI Wesley Peterson crime series.When a body is discovered in a picturesque South Devon village, DI Wesley Peterson is called in to investigate. The victim, Barry Brown, is a celebrity ghostwriter and the theft of his laptop suggests that the motive for murder may lie in his work.While Wesley investigates Barry's famous… Shares Mystery

SPQR XII: Oracle of the Dead

SPQR XII: Oracle of the Dead John Maddox Roberts · 2008 Shares Mystery with this book.

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