1950s
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The Holy Sinner (1951), Thomas Mann
Rating: 7/10 · Translated from German Accuracy: Not history but legend, retold from Hartmann von Aue’s…
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Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), Marguerite Yourcenar
Rating: 10/10 Accuracy: Meticulous. Yourcenar added a note explaining what is documented and what she invented.…
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Désirée (1951), Annemarie Selinko
Rating: 6/10 Accuracy: The outline is true; the intimate details and much of Désirée’s character are…
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The Emigrants series (1949–59), Vilhelm Moberg
Rating: 9/10 · Translated from Swedish (four volumes: The Emigrants, Unto a Good Land, The Settlers,…
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The Galton Case (1959), Ross Macdonald
Rating: 8/10 Plot: A dying matriarch wants her long-lost son found; the search unearths a skeleton,…
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Points and Lines (1958), Seichō Matsumoto
Rating: 7/10 · Translated from Japanese; English edition 1970 Plot: A man and a woman found…
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Anatomy of a Murder (1958), Robert Traver
Rating: 7/10 Plot: A small-town lawyer defends an army lieutenant who shot the man he says…
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That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana (1957), Carlo Emilio Gadda
Rating: 8/10 · Translated from Italian Plot: In 1927 Rome, a jewel theft and then a…
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4.50 from Paddington (1957), Agatha Christie
Rating: 7/10 Plot: A passenger sees a woman strangled in a train running alongside hers. No…
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Cop Hater (1956), Ed McBain
Rating: 6/10 Plot: In a stifling summer, someone starts shooting detectives from the 87th Precinct, and…
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The Rats of Montsouris (1955), Léo Malet
Rating: 6/10 · Translated from French; English edition decades later Plot: Private eye Nestor Burma is…
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The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955), Patricia Highsmith
Rating: 9/10 Plot: A simple errand, fetching a rich man’s son home from Italy, curdles into…
