If the counterfactual Sitka—complete with the Rebbe’s dynasty, the Verbover underworld, and the looming Reversion—hooked you, Harris’s Fatherland delivers a similarly immersive what-if. Like Landsman digging into Mendel Shpilman’s death only to brush against state-scale secrets, investigator Xavier March follows a murder that unspools into a vast political cover-up inside a chillingly plausible Nazi-victorious Europe. It’s that same blend of street-level clue-chasing with a world-rewriting backdrop.

Loved watching Meyer Landsman trudge through snow-crusted Sitka motels, parsing chess clues and dodging the Verbovers while Bina keeps him honest? Miéville’s The City & the City puts Inspector Tyador Borlú on a case where jurisdiction is a labyrinth and perception itself is policed. As with Landsman and Berko threading between Hasidic power brokers and federal pressures, Borlú must navigate overlapping authorities and forbidden crossings while piecing together a murder that keeps changing the map.

If Landsman’s deadpan wisecracks—tossed off between stale coffee, chess-set breadcrumbs, and run-ins with the Verbovers—made the darkness go down smooth, you’ll click with Hank Palace in The Last Policeman. With an asteroid incoming and society fraying, Palace insists on solving one suspicious death anyway, much as Landsman can’t let go of Mendel Shpilman’s case. The jokes land dry and sharp, the stakes feel crushing, and the humanity cuts through.

When Landsman’s murder case leads into a thicket of power—Bina’s department, federal suits circling Sitka, and the messianic machinations around Mendel—what’s irresistible is the slow tightening of a web. Le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy offers that same patient unmasking: George Smiley pieces together small, human clues to expose a mole hidden at the pinnacle of British intelligence. Expect the same quiet betrayals, coded conversations, and the chilling moment when a private lead becomes a national reckoning.

If you loved how Sitka felt real down to the Yiddish turns of phrase, the Boundary Mavens’ jurisdictional quirks, and the snow-slick cafés where Landsman and Berko trade barbs, Wecker’s The Golem and the Jinni will wrap you in 1890s Lower Manhattan. It’s a different mode—mythic rather than noir—but the neighborhoods hum with specificity, from tenement bakeries to clandestine workshops, and the community’s mingled faith, folklore, and hustle feel as tangible as Chabon’s reimagined Alaska.