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Books Like A Gun for Sale
Best books to read after A Gun for Sale by Graham Greene
A Gun for Sale is Greene's most hard-boiled entertainment — Raven the harelipped professional killer caught between the police hunting him and the conspiracy that has used him to start a war. If the novel's dark atmosphere and its portrait of a criminal with a code moved you, these books share its concern with the professional killer as a moral figure, its interest in the political manipulation of violence, and its conviction that the people who hire assassins are more dangerous than the assassins themselves.
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Buy on AmazonBrighton Rock
by Graham Greene
The essential companion — the Catholic thriller that most fully develops the territory A Gun for Sale establishes; Pinkie's authentic evil adds the theological weight that transforms the hardboiled formula into serious literature; the natural next step after A Gun for Sale
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Buy on AmazonThe Ministry of Fear
by Graham Greene
The companion entertainment — Arthur Rowe in wartime London; the development of A Gun for Sale's formula into a more psychologically complex and more politically explicit narrative; both are organized around a protagonist who discovers too late that they are a pawn in someone else's game
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Buy on AmazonThe Big Sleep
by Raymond Chandler
Chandler's hardboiled masterpiece — the essential American parallel; the comparison between Raven (the hired killer) and Philip Marlowe (the private detective) shows the difference between the British and American approaches to the same genre material; both are organized around a morally ambiguous professional navigating a world of corruption
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Buy on AmazonThe Day of the Jackal
by Frederick Forsyth
Forsyth's thriller about a hired assassin contracted to kill de Gaulle — the most celebrated political assassination thriller in the British tradition and the direct heir to the territory A Gun for Sale establishes; the comparison shows how the professional killer evolved as a literary figure from Greene to Forsyth
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Buy on AmazonRipley Under Ground
by Patricia Highsmith
The sequel to The Talented Mr. Ripley — Highsmith's portrait of Tom Ripley, the most celebrated criminal protagonist in postwar crime fiction; the comparison between Raven and Ripley shows the two possibilities for the criminal as moral figure: Raven is defined by his deformity and his victimhood, Ripley by his adaptability and his coldness
- 6
Buy on AmazonStamboul Train
by Graham Greene
The predecessor in Greene's entertainments — the Orient Express thriller that established the formula; the comparison shows how Greene's entertainments evolved from the train-journey structure to the hardboiled political-conspiracy structure of A Gun for Sale
- 7
Buy on AmazonNo Orchids for Miss Blandish
by James Hadley Chase
Chase's 1939 hardboiled thriller — the most explicit American-style crime fiction in the British tradition of the same period; Orwell wrote a famous essay comparing No Orchids to A Gun for Sale as examples of the hardboiled genre in its British and American modes; the comparison Orwell draws is still one of the best discussions of what distinguishes the British crime novel from its American equivalent
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Buy on AmazonThe Talented Mr. Ripley
by Patricia Highsmith
Highsmith's portrait of Tom Ripley — the most important criminal protagonist in postwar crime fiction and the most direct American parallel to Greene's Raven; both are defined by a physical characteristic that marks them as outsiders (Raven's harelip, Ripley's social inadequacy), and both turn the criminal's code into a form of moral seriousness
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