18 books like The Moving Target

What to read after The Moving Target — books similar to it, matched on shared themes.

The Drowning Pool Ross Macdonald · 1950 · ★ 3.6 · 213p · ≈ 7h · Moderate “Archer wasn't going anywhere with the case. The women in it were getting to him. The one who had married for money was out to show him how little it now mattered. The one who was being blackmailed didn't care how Archer saved her mockery of a marriage. The young girl was the worst; too innocent to be involved in this sordid tangle. Three beautiful women. They had a way of distracting Archer—even… 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

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

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 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

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

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

L.A. Outlaws

L.A. Outlaws T. Jefferson Parker · 2008 · ★ 3.8 · 372p · ≈ 12h · Moderate Investigating the latest crime scene of a celebrity thief who has been staging lucrative heists and donating the spoils to charity, rookie deputy Charlie Hood is forced to make an ethics-testing decision when the thief is targeted by a professional killer. Shares Los angeles

The Ivory Grin

The Ivory Grin Ross MacDonald · 1952 · 204p · ≈ 6h · Moderate Traveling from sleazy motels to stately seaside manors, The Ivory Grin is one of Lew Archer's most violent and macabre cases ever.A hard-faced woman clad in a blue mink stole and dripping with diamonds hires Lew Archer to track down her former maid, who she claims has stolen her jewelry. Archer can tell he's being fed a line, but curiosity gets the better of him and he accepts the case. He… Shares Private investigators

Another City, Not My Own Dominick Dunne · 1997 · ★ 3.8 · 360p · ≈ 12h · Moderate Told from the point of view of one of Dunne's most familiar fictional characters - Gus Bailey - Another City, Not My Own tells how Gus, the movers and shakers of Los Angeles, and the city itself are drawn into the vortex of the O.J. Simpson trial. We have met Gus Bailey in previous novels by Dominick Dunne. He is a writer and journalist, father of a murdered child, and chronicler of justice -… Shares Los angeles, California

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

Little Green

Little Green Walter Mosley · 2013 · ★ 4.5 · 291p · ≈ 9h · Moderate Surviving a near-fatal car wreck and cruising the streets of the Sunset Strip during the heyday of the late 1960s, Easy Rawlins investigates the disappearance of a young African-American, a case that is complicated by Rawlins's changing perspectives. Shares Los angeles, Private investigators

Eye of the Storm

Eye of the Storm Marcia Muller · 1988 · 356p · ≈ 11h · Moderate Appleby Island, once the magnificent home of a tycoon and planter, is a place of history and mystery in the Sacramento delta. Its story includes hints of tragedy, fueling rumors that ghosts still walk its derelict orchards. Now Patsy McCone, her new lover, and a group of invetors are turning the old mansion into an elegant bed and breakfast.  Summoned by her eccentric younger sister, San… Shares California, Private investigators

A Darkness More Than Night

A Darkness More Than Night Michael Connelly · 2000 · ★ 4.5 · 418p · ≈ 13h · Moderate Terrence McCaleb is asked by the LAPD to help them investigate a series of murders that have them baffled. They are the kind of ritualized killings that McCaleb specialized in solving with the FBI, and he is reluctantly drawn from his peaceful new life back into the horror and excitement of tracking down a terrifying homicidal maniac. More horrifying still, the suspect who seems to fit the… Shares Los angeles, California, Private investigators

Amateur City

Amateur City Katherine V. Forrest · 1984 · ★ 4.3 · 204p · ≈ 6h · Moderate Tough and demanding LAPD Detective Kate Delafield is the leader of the investigation into a high-rise office building murder. The case is intriguing but routine—until Kate interviews the only witness, Ellen O'Neil. When Ellen O'Neil took her new job over the objections of her lover, she wasn't expecting to become embroiled in murder. The curiosity that Kate Delafield rouses is equally… Shares Los angeles, California

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

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

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