Recs if you like Red Harvest...

Based on the list/book published in 2006, general editor Peter Boxall.

This list includes works and authors that influenced the game as well as others with similar themes and writing.

I know there are already several lists with a California theme, but I am hoping this acts as a syllabus of sorts for books that deal with the core myth, history, violence, dream, and contradiction of California. Suggestions are welcome!

A list featuring classic hardboiled detective capers—largely cynical novels (and a few story collections) hailing primarily from the 20’s-50’s, populated by quick thinking and hard drinking detectives, femme fatales, gangsters, murders, and periodic guns fights; where coffee is served late at night, and there is almost always an abundance of cigarette smoke…

Time Magazine’s All-Time Best 100 English Language Novels from 1923 to 2005 as published in 2005.

Time Magazine’s compilation of the 100 best novels published since 1923.

(101 because “The Berlin Stories” is an omnibus of “Mr Norris Changes Trains” and “Goodbye To Berlin.”)

Technically for the HRCYED rainbow challenge and the coat of many colors secret challenge but if you just like your color titles then I hope you find something for you!

I’m working my way through these stories of weird fiction, noir, and the unknowable that are direct influences or spiritual ancestors to The Imago Sequence, True Detective season 1, and other modern cosmic horror noir stories.

Reading order and non-book entries listed in comments.