1960s
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The Locked Room (1972), Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö
Rating: 8/10 · Translated from Swedish Plot: Martin Beck, back at work after a shooting, investigates…
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An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1972), P.D. James
Rating: 8/10 Plot: A young woman inherits a failing detective agency and takes on its first…
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Equal Danger (1971), Leonardo Sciascia
Rating: 8/10 · Translated from Italian (original title Il contesto) Plot: Judges are being killed one…
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The Day of the Jackal (1971), Frederick Forsyth
Rating: 8/10 Plot: Right-wing French militants hire a foreign professional to assassinate de Gaulle, and a…
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Shroud for a Nightingale (1971), P.D. James
RRating: 8/10 Plot: At a nurses’ training school, a student dies horribly during a teaching demonstration,…
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The Underground Man (1971), Ross Macdonald
Rating: 8/10 Plot: A father searching for his own missing father is murdered, his young son…
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The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1970), George V. Higgins
Rating: 8/10 Plot: An ageing Boston gunrunner facing prison weighs whether to inform, while the people…
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Papa Là-Bas (1968), John Dickson Carr
Rating: 6/10 Accuracy: Lively on antebellum New Orleans, with its Creole society, duelling codes and voodoo…
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Murder in Canton (1966), Robert van Gulik
Rating: 6/10 Accuracy: Vivid on the cosmopolitan port of Canton and its Arab traders, though the…
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The Willow Pattern (1965), Robert van Gulik
Rating: 6/10 Accuracy: Evocative of a plague-stricken capital and its aristocratic families, with van Gulik’s usual…
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The Council of Egypt (1963), Leonardo Sciascia
Rating: 8/10 · Translated from Italian Accuracy: Closely based on real events in 1780s–90s Palermo, including…
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The Demoniacs (1962), John Dickson Carr
Rating: 6/10 Accuracy: Good on Georgian London and on the early days of organised policing under…
