From The Reader’s Guide to the Private Eye Novel by Gary Warren Niebuhr
It offers entries on over a thousand titles by more than 90 authors and more lists than I can list, including series characters, authors, settings and locations and possibly best of all, a list of what he considers a list of twenty-one the “Classic Recommended Titles.”
- As Bad As I Am (1959) by William Ard
Private eyes: Mike Fontaine and Barney Glines - The Fabulous Clipjoint (1947) by Fredric Brown
Private eyes: Ed and Am Hunter - The Big Sleep (1939) by Raymond Chandler
Private eye: Philip Marlowe - Farewell My Lovely (1940) by Raymond Chandler
Private eye: Philip Marlowe - The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler
Private eye: Philip Marlowe - The Long Goodbye (1953) by Raymond Chandler
Private eye: Philip Marlowe - The Urgent Hangman (1939) by Peter Cheyney
Private eye: Slim Callaghan - True Detective (1983) by Max Allan Collins
Private eye: Nate Heller - True Crime (1984) by Max Allan Collins
Private eye: Nate Heller - The Eighth Circle (1958) by Stanley Ellin
Private eye: Murray Kirk - The Bigger They Come (1939) by A.A. Fair
Private eyes: Bertha Cool & Donald Lam - The Maltese Falcon (1930) by Dashiell Hammett
Private eye: Sam Spade - $106,000 Blood Money (1943) by Dashiell Hammett
Private eye: The Continental Op - Red Harvest (1929) by Dashiell Hammett
Private eye: The Continental Op - Red Gardenias (1939) by Jonathan Latimer
Private eye: Bill Crane - The Drowning Pool (1950) by Ross Macdonald
Private eye: Lew Archer - Deadly Weapon (1946) by Wade Miller
Private eye: Walter James - Uneasy Street (1948) by Wade Miller
Private eye: Max Thursday - Bitter Medecine (1987) by Sara Paretsky
Private eye: V.I. Warshawski - The Death of the Detective (1973) by Mark Smith
Private eye: Arnold Magnuson - I, The Jury (1947) by Mickey Spillane
Private eye: Mike Hammer
