If what gripped you in Mystic River was Jimmy Markum’s descent into payback after Katie’s murder—and the way that violence poisons a tight-knit community—Razorblade Tears will hit the same nerve. Two estranged fathers team up to hunt their sons’ killers, carving through the underbelly of working-class towns much like Jimmy and the Savage brothers do. It’s brutal, propulsive, and forces you to sit with the moral wreckage revenge leaves behind.

If the haunting core of Mystic River for you was how Dave Boyle’s childhood abduction and Katie’s killing warp every relationship around Sean and Jimmy, Defending Jacob digs just as deeply. When a teenager is accused of murdering a classmate, his ADA father must reckon with loyalty, inherited darkness, and a town’s judgment—echoing the way Boston’s neighborhoods close ranks and fracture after Katie’s death.

If you were riveted by Jimmy Markum’s choices—the way a grieving father in Mystic River bends justice to his will—A Simple Plan offers a similarly harrowing slide. Three regular guys find a crashed plane full of cash and start making small compromises that spiral into murder, cover-ups, and loyalty tests as corrosive as anything Jimmy and his crew face when they chase answers about Katie.

If you liked how Mystic River braided Sean Devine’s police work with Jimmy’s street-level hunt and Dave’s unraveling, L.A. Confidential uses multiple perspectives to even bigger effect. Three very different cops narrate converging investigations, each revealing angles the others can’t see—much like how Sean, Jimmy, and Dave’s chapters refract the truth behind Katie’s murder from clashing vantage points.

If the claustrophobia of Mystic River’s neighborhood—the bar talk, shared history, and unspoken debts between Sean, Jimmy, and Dave—was your hook, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter delivers that same intimate pressure. A missing girl forces two former friends to confront an old accusation and the way a small town keeps score, mirroring how the past in Boston refuses to let Jimmy and Dave move on.