If what gripped you in A Coffin for Dimitrios was Charles Latimer tracing Dimitrios Makropoulos from the Smyrna morgue through Istanbul, Sofia, and Paris—piecing together a life of crime from wary witnesses—you’ll love Greene’s postwar chase through Vienna. As Rollo Martins digs into the too-charming Harry Lime’s supposed death, every interview, side street, and bureaucratic office hides another lie, culminating in that unforgettable descent into the sewers. It’s the same taut, clue-by-clue manhunt where each revelation makes the quarry more disturbing—and more fascinating.

Ambler’s portrait of intelligence services rubbing shoulders with smugglers and killers—Latimer’s brushes with Colonel Haki and the way Mr. Peters turns a dossier into leverage—finds an even icier echo here. Alec Leamas is sent on a morally corroding mission where handlers, informers, and enemies blur into the same machine, much as Dimitrios’s crimes bleed into politics. If those final reckonings on borders and trains stuck with you, the devastating endgame between Control, Fiedler, and Mundt will, too.

If you were hooked by Ambler’s bleak European underworld—the kind that produces a figure like Dimitrios and predators like Mr. Peters—you’ll feel right at home with Sam Spade’s descent into fog and greed. Spade navigates Kasper Gutman, Joel Cairo, and Brigid O’Shaughnessy the way Latimer tiptoes around fixers and informants: with the knowledge that kindness can be a con and trust a liability. The cynicism, sudden violence, and hard moral edges are cut from the same dark cloth.

Did you savor how Latimer reconstructs Dimitrios’s life by visiting old acquaintances, combing archives, and letting small inconsistencies accumulate until the truth becomes inescapable? George Smiley does the same, quietly reopening files, interrogating old colleagues, and following a trail of tiny anomalies to expose a mole. The suspense doesn’t come from chases, but from the incremental tightening of a net—much like Latimer’s investigation that leads to that fatal confrontation.

If you were mesmerized by Dimitrios—how each revelation made him more monstrous yet more compelling—and by Latimer’s uneasy obsession, Highsmith offers a masterclass. Tom Ripley, like Dimitrios, reinvents himself through fraud, charm, and calculated violence. Watching Ripley manipulate friends and authorities the way Dimitrios manipulates smugglers, bankers, and police scratches the same itch: the intimate study of a criminal whose talent is wearing masks others want to believe.