Auckland Council Libraries: Private eye: past and present

Private eye: past and present

​A chronological exploration of the finest in American detective, hardboiled and noir fiction, from its earliest practitioners to modern offerings.

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The big book of the Continental Op

Dashiell Hammett

Book

Dashiell Hammett began as a contributor to pulp magazines and succeeded during his brief career in weaving crime fiction into the fabric of American writing. Collected here are stories featuring his archetypal anonymous detective, the Continental Op.

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The big sleep and other novels

Raymond Chandler

Book

Often hailed as the master of the form, Raymond Chandler elevated the detective novel to a haunting mystery of power and corruption. Three classic, quintessentially American novels are collected in this volume.

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Five novels of the 1940s & 50s

David Goodis

Book

David Goodis was a Philadelphia born pulp expressionist who brought a jazzy style to his spare, passionate novels of mean streets and doomed protagonists. Long a hard-to-find cult favourite, his best novels are now back in print.

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Four novels of the 1950s

Ross Macdonald

Book

Ross Macdonald brought to the crime novel a new realism, psychological depth, and a gift for intricate mystery narratives. His books are both unsurpassed entertainments and emotional evocations of an outwardly prosperous, inwardly turbulent America.

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A stranger in my grave

Margaret Millar

Book

A masterpiece of suspense and one of the books that forever changed the domestic thriller, Margaret Millar’s prose casts an atmosphere of disembodied menace over the thoroughly ordinary settings and situations of a suburban California city.

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Stairway to an empty room

Dolores Hitchens

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Dolores Hitchens wrote crime novels that were tough and compassionate, with a sharp eye for the emotional scars that violence leaves. Influential in its day and still vibrant and extraordinarily riveting, her work is long overdue for rediscovery.

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All shot up

Chester B. Himes

Book

Harlem's toughest detective duo, fight against an absurdist world of racism and class warfare. Shocking, explosive, and caustically funny, Chester Himes turned his pen to crime fiction after several trenchant novels of social protest.

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The friends of Eddie Coyle

George V. Higgins

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George V. Higgins's seminal crime novels are down-and-dirty tales of thieves, mobsters, and cops on the mean streets of Boston, carried by his unerring sense of naturalistic, whip-smart dialogue that leaps of the pages.

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The last good kiss

James Crumley

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James Crumley reinvigorated detective fiction for a post-Vietnam America with his hard-bitten private eye C.W Sughrue. On the hunt for a dissolute author and an alcoholic bulldog, Sughrue delves into the depths of San Francisco's underbelly.

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Get Shorty

Elmore Leonard

Book

Blending gritty toughness and unpredictable violence with wild humor and an uncanny ear for the rhythms of ordinary speech, Elmore Leonard was dubbed the “Dickens of Detroit” for his fantastically inventive storytelling and one-of-a-kind style.

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Auckland Council Libraries:Book list Recommended reading lists about different topics and genres to help you find new books to read.