Double Indemnity
by James M. Cain | 
The Killer Inside Me
by Jim Thompson | 
The Big Sleep
by Raymond Chandler | 
The Black Dahlia
by James Ellroy | 
Red Harvest
by Dashiell Hammett | 
The Talented Mr. Ripley
by Patricia Highsmith | 
Pop. 1280
by Jim Thompson | 
The Long Goodbye
by Raymond Chandler | 
Hell Hath No Fury
by Charles Williams | 
Strangers on a train
by Patricia Highsmith | 
The Maltese Falcon
by Dashiell Hammett | 
L.A. Confidential
by James Ellroy | 
Recoil
by Jim Thompson | 
Farewell, My Lovely
by Raymond Chandler | 
The Grifters
by Jim Thompson | 
Mildred Pierce
by James M. Cain | 
Serenade
by James M. Cain | 
The Butterfly
by James M. Cain | 
Crooked House
by Agatha Christie | 
The Third Man
by Graham Greene |
Cain's first novel - the subject of an obscenity trial in Boston and the inspiration for Camus's The Stranger - is the fever-pitched tale of a drifter who stumbles into a job, into an erotic obsession, and into a murder.