If what gripped you in The Galton Case was Archer’s humane, probing narration—tracking a vanished heir, sifting imposture, and uncovering a skeleton that turns family myths to dust—Chandler’s The Long Goodbye gives you that same depth. Philip Marlowe’s friendship with Terry Lennox spirals into a case that peels back identity, loyalty, and self-deception with the same aching sympathy Archer shows the shattered Galton clan.

You enjoyed how The Galton Case braided a cold disappearance, a dubious heir, and a buried body into a single revelation. In Case Histories, Jackson Brodie unravels multiple unsolved cases that at first seem unrelated—much like Archer’s threads—until connections click into place with that same layered satisfaction and emotional sting.

If the impostor reveal and the orchard bones in The Galton Case thrilled you because they forced Archer—and you—to rethink everything, Gone Baby Gone delivers a gut-punch of a final turn. Patrick Kenzie’s child-abduction case twists into a choice between law and conscience, echoing Archer’s most haunting dilemma: what justice looks like once the truth finally surfaces.

If Archer’s dry, observant voice guiding you through the Galton family’s lies was your hook in The Galton Case, Marlowe’s first-person narration in The Big Sleep will scratch the same itch. The way he needles past evasions, sizes up corrupt families, and keeps a stubborn moral core amid rot mirrors Archer’s relentless, humane sleuthing.

If you liked the grim undertow of The Galton Case—the moneyed façade, the buried corpse, the family story curdled into crime—Ellroy’s The Black Dahlia turns that darkness up. Detectives Bucky Bleichert and Lee Blanchard dive into a notorious murder that exposes the same kind of corrupt wealth, damaged identities, and bruising revelations Archer keeps colliding with.