Foundational "Noir" Novels : Halfvalue.com

Listmania!
Foundational "Noir" Novels

Ryan Harvey "Wolf Shadow" (Los Angeles, CA USA)
Qualifications: Noir literature scholar

Crime Novels : American Noir of the 1930s and 40s : The Postman Always Rings Twice / They Shoot Horses, Don't They? / Thieves Like Us / The Big Clock / Nightmare Alley / I Married a Dead Man (Library of America) by Robert Polito
$22.05 Used & New from: $17.40
A great place to start. "I Married a Dead Man" and "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" are essential!

Crime Novels : American Noir of the 1950s : The Killer Inside Me / The Talented Mr. Ripley / Pick-up / Down There / The Real Cool Killers (Library of America) by Jim Thompson
$22.05 Used & New from: $14.42
Keep going with this collection, containing a few rarities.

Dashiell Hammett : Complete Novels : Red Harvest / The Dain Curse / The Maltese Falcon / The Glass Key / The Thin Man (Library of America) by Dashiell Hammett
$22.05 Used & New from: $15.00
All of Hammett's foundational novels of noir. (Except "The Thin Man," which is a comic murder mystery.)

The Maltese Falcon (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) by Dashiell Hammett
$9.20 Used & New from: $1.49
But if you read only one Hammett book...this is the first great noir novel. Sam Spade searches for The Black Bird. Some of the best, most hardboiled dialogue ever written.

Red Harvest (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) by Dashiell Hammett
$9.20 Used & New from: $3.26
And if you read two Hammett novels... His nameless detective, The Continental Op, finds himself in a bloody gangster war in the town of "Poisonville."

Rendezvous in Black (20th Century Rediscoveries) by Cornell Woolrich
$9.97 Used & New from: $7.75
Woolrich was the man who truly made noir the genre we know today, and this is his greatest work. Suspenseful, emotionally wrenching, and drenched in a sense of cruel fate and inescapabel doom. Amazing

The Bride Wore Black by Cornell Woolrich
Used & New from: $8.25
Not Woolrich's best, but highly influential in the noir field. A bride who loses her husband to an accident on their wedding day tracks down those responsible in a quest for vengeance.

Phantom Lady by Cornell Woolrich
$39.95 Used & New from: $32.95
Another famous Woolrich novel, with the a quintessential noir premise: only a vanished lady can provide an alibi to a man sitting on death row.

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
$9.97 Used & New from: $1.90
Chandler's first novel, introducing P.I. Philip Marlowe.

Farewell, My Lovely (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) by Raymond Chandler
$9.97 Used & New from: $1.48
Chandler's second novel is even better and more deeply noir.

The Long Goodbye (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) by Raymond Chandler
$10.01 Used & New from: $3.30
Chandler best novel, and perhaps the best noir book ever written.

The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, and Selected Stories by James M. Cain
$14.95 Used & New from: $7.61
Cain was an early influence on noir, and "Double Indemnity" is his best.

The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ripley Under Ground, Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith
$16.38 Used & New from: $8.49
Highsmith's amoral character, Ripley, is a quintessential noir character.

A Rage in Harlem (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) by Chester Himes
$8.43 Used & New from: $3.00
One of the first African-American authors of noir, Himes's work is violent and chaotic, and perfect examples of the action-noir subgenre.

Shoot the Piano Player (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) by David Goodis
$9.20 Used & New from: $2.75
Goddis's best novel; an author very similar to Woolrich in his bleak outlook on life.

The Killer Inside Me (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) by Jim Thompson
$9.20 Used & New from: $1.99
Jim Thompson's "mid-west" noir books are amazing, and this is the best. A disturbing view into the mind of a killer.

The Grifters (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) by Jim Thompson
$8.47 Used & New from: $1.78
Another excellent Jim Thompson novel, this one taking place in the world of small-time con artists.

The Mike Hammer Collection Volume 1 by Mickey Spillane
$10.40 Used & New from: $1.97
Contains "I, the Jury," Spillane's first novel about P.I. Mike Hammer. Spillane's work is brutal and violent with a cruel vigilante streak to it, but the world of Mike Hammer is deeply noir.

The Drowning Pool (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) by Ross Macdonald
$9.24 Used & New from: $2.54
The legitimate successor to Chandler, this is an early Lew Archer mystery and one of the best.

A Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin
$9.24 Used & New from: $2.29
Levin's first novel is the best homage ever written to Woolrich's style, and one of the best noir novels of the 1950s. The plot twists will blow your mind!

The Ministry of Fear : An Entertainment (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics) by Graham Greene
Used & New from: $4.60
The best noir novel to come out of 1940s England. (Yes, the English wrote noir as well.) Uses the classic "amnesia" plotline, set amidst London during the blitz.

The Day of the Locust (Signet Classic) by Nathanael West
$6.95 Used & New from: $1.15
Although not specifically concerned with crime, this novel of the "little losers" who crowd Hollywood with their broken dreams had a huge influence on many crime novelists.

Fast One (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) by Paul Cain
Used & New from: $5.77
Out of print, but absolutely essential: a wild, violent, existential ride to doom! No book moves faster...utterly insane from page one to the words THE END.

I Wake Up Screaming by Steve Fisher
Used & New from: $2.95
Another out-of-print classic, taking place against the backdrop of Hollywood and wannabe starlets.

1984 : Centennial Edition by Thomas Pynchon
$9.75 Used & New from: $6.90
Although technically a science fiction novel, Orwell's grim vision of a man trapped in a world that seeks to crush him is one of the most vivid noir world portraits, and influenced the whole genre.

Listmania!

Books I'd Read Over & Over: A list by "followingalice"

So You'd Like to...

know about "Noir" author James M. Cain?: A guide by Gary F. Taylor, James M. Cain Fan

Explore the Shady World of Noir Fiction?: A guide by Themis-Athena, armchair literary traveler

Discover some good mysteries?: A guide by Jack Purcell, Mystery eater who survived the shortage