Books like The immaterial murder case by Julian Symons

Julian Symons’ detective mystery follows John Wilkins as he reveals psychological secrets to a consulting psychiatrist, faces a tense trial, and encounters a cunning private detective, all culminating in a clever double‑play of intrigue.

The Progress of a Crime blends sociological insight into 1950s youth culture with investigative journalism, a police procedural and courtroom drama, offering a comprehensive exploration of crime for the serious enthusiast.

In Buenos Aires, a struggling writer is drawn into a deadly web of murder and revenge when an old acquaintance’s relatives start dying. The story blurs fact and fiction, questioning chance and calculation.

In this lively, enjoyable look at the best American and British detective fiction, David Lehman investigates the mystery of mysteries: the profound satisfactions we get from evil, disorder, mayhem, and deception--that we know will be put right by the last page. As Lehman shows, the detective story draws deeply from ancient storytelling traditions. The mystery's conventions--the locked room, the clue "hidden" in plain sight, the diabolical double, the villainous least likely subject--work on us as childhood fairy tales do; they prey upon our darkest fears, taking us to the brink of the unbearable before restoring a comforting sense of order. The myth of Oedipus, for example, contains the essential elements of a whodunit, with the twist that the murderer the detective pursues is himself. With their wisecracking gumshoe heroes, Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler fashioned an existential romance out of the detective novel. More recent writers such as Ross MacDonald, P. D. James, and Ruth Rendell have raised the genre to a new level of psychological sophistication. Yet the form evolves still, and Lehman guides us to the epistemological riddles of Jorge Luis Borges and Umberto Eco, who challenge the notion of a knowable truth.

New York detective Stanley Hastings gets pulled into a deadly prostitution ring when he tries to rescue a housewife from her pimp, only to find himself the top suspect amid money, sex, and murder.