If you were drawn to how Lila Mae reads an elevator’s “feel” and wrestles with James Fulton’s quasi-mystical theory while chasing the Fanny Briggs crash, you’ll love how The City & the City turns a murder case into a philosophical puzzle about perception and borders. Like the Empiricist vs. Intuitionist schism, Inspector Borlú navigates clashing civic doctrines—“unseeing” as law—that shape reality itself, delivering that same brainy noir charge you enjoyed in The Intuitionist.

If the backroom deals around the mayoral race, Chancre’s guild power plays, and Orville Lever’s maneuvering pulled you in, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union brings a similarly rich web of political chess around a noir mystery. Detective Landsman’s case barrels through city power brokers and sectarian agendas with the same sense of municipal pressure that boxed in Lila Mae as she hunted the saboteur.

If you loved how the elevator—the very machinery of “uplift”—becomes a loaded symbol as Lila Mae deciphers Fulton’s notebooks and navigates a city built on hidden shafts and secret floors, Invisible Man gives you an equally potent allegorical journey. From the Battle Royal to the Brotherhood, Ellison’s unnamed narrator moves through institutions that, like the Elevator Guild, promise ascent while masking exploitation—a resonance you’ll feel immediately.

If the way The Intuitionist builds a whole social order atop elevator theory—from Empiricist protocols to the mythic “black box”—hooked you, Never Let Me Go uses a quiet, human-scale lens to explore a chilling premise with similar restraint. As Lila Mae pieces through Fulton's papers to confront the system’s ethics, Kathy H. slowly uncovers the moral architecture of her world, delivering that same subtle, aching speculative punch.

If Lila Mae’s poise under pressure—as the first Black female elevator inspector, framed and surveilled while she pursues the Fanny Briggs culprit—was what kept you turning pages, American Spy offers a kindred protagonist. Marie Mitchell, a Black FBI officer, battles institutional bias while running a morally thorny mission; like Lila Mae, she must trust her instincts inside a system designed to doubt her.