If Bernie Gunther tracking the burned couple and the missing necklace from Hermann Six’s safe hooked you, Philip Marlowe’s dive into the rot beneath the Sternwood family will feel just right. Like Bernie trading barbs with SS heavies and nightclub fixers, Marlowe wisecracks his way through blackmailers, gamblers, and a body or two, following a trail that keeps doubling back into L.A.’s silken, lethal high society. If you loved how the clues in March Violets keep shifting under Bernie’s feet, The Big Sleep delivers that same tight, twisty investigation with razor dialogue.

Bernie’s case pulls him from Olympic-pageant Berlin into the shadow of Dachau and into the orbit of men like Göring—exactly the kind of political tripwire that defines Zoo Station. Journalist John Russell prowls the same streets Bernie does, where every favor is owed to a Party man and every question brushes the SS the wrong way. If the way the ‘March violets’ worm into power and warp Bernie’s investigation gripped you, you’ll dig Russell’s tightrope act through informants, ministries, and quiet betrayals in prewar Berlin.

If you were pulled in by the soot, blood, and moral ruin of 1936 Berlin—those brutal interrogations, the cremated crime scene, the sense that power always wins—Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia goes just as dark. LAPD cops Bucky Bleichert and Lee Blanchard chase a sensational murder into a pit of corruption, sex, and money that feels like the American mirror to Bernie’s world. The atmosphere is raw, the violence unflinching, and the institutions as compromised as any Bernie has to bribe or dodge.

Bernie’s no saint—he cuts deals, mouths off to Nazis, and still tries to keep a private code. Arkady Renko is cut from that cloth. In Gorky Park, Renko hunts a triple homicide in Soviet Moscow, where every step—like Bernie’s run-ins with Heydrich’s gang—means choosing between truth and survival. If you liked watching Bernie thread his way through ministries and secret police while staying just this side of damnation, Renko’s battle with Party pressure, KGB interference, and his own conscience will land perfectly.

Bernie’s sardonic one-liners—even when he’s staring down SS bruisers or combing a fire-gutted villa—are half the fun. Sean Duffy’s voice in The Cold Cold Ground has that same bite: a Catholic cop in 1981 Belfast juggling riots, paramilitaries, and a messy murder case. If Bernie’s barbed humor and streetwise observations kept you turning pages, Duffy’s deadpan as he navigates roadblocks, informers, and political pressure will give you that same dark chuckle amid the dread.