Dashiell Hammett
The Maltese Falcon
Red Harvest
The Thin Man

Raymond Chandler
The Big Sleep
Farewell, My Lovely
The Little Sister

The 1950s

Rex Stout
Death of a Dude
Murder by the Book
Silent Speaker

The 1960s

John D. MacDonald
The Lonely Silver Rain
The Long Lavender Look
A Purple Place for Dying

Ross MacDonald
The Drowning Pool
The Sleeping Beauty
The Underground Man

The 1970s

Robert B. Parker
Early Autumn
Looking For Rachel Wallace
Small Vices

Lawrence Block
A Dance at the Slaughterhouse
A Ticket to the Boneyard
A Walk Among the Tombstones

Stuart M. Kaminsky
Big Silence
Not Quite Kosher
Retribution

The 1980s

Female Private Eyes

Marcia Muller (Sharon McCone, P.I.)
Both Ends of the Night
Broken Promise Land
Listen to the Silence

Sue Grafton (Kinsey Millhone, P.I.)
A is For Alibi
B is For Burglar
C is for Corpse

Sara Paretsky (V.I. Warshawski, P.I.)
Hard Time
Indemnity Only
Tunnel Vision

Linda Barnes (Carlotta Carlyle, P.I.)
Coyote Snapshot
Steel Guitar

AKA Regional Writers

Robert Campbell (Chicago)
The Lion’s Share
Pigeon Pie

Loren Estleman (Detroit)
The Hours of the Virgin
Witchfinder

Walter Mosley (L.A.)
Black Betty
Gone Fishin’
A Little Yellow Dog

George Pelecanos (Washington)
The Big Blowdown
King Suckerman

Jonathan Valin (Cincinnati)
Missing
The Music Lovers

The private eye first made his appearance in the 1920s in the pages of pulp magazines; inexpensive weekly magazines printed with flashy covers and newsprint pages. It is suggested that this character could only have developed after World War I, during the years of Prohibition. The disillusionment following the war and the growing gangster control of the cities led to a mood of cynicism, detachment, a guarded romanticism and a compulsion toward action; hence, the aggressive, straight-shooting P.I. By the 1960s detective fiction was out and spy fiction was in. During the 1970s the female P.I. took off. The 1980s witnessed the renaissance of detective fiction. We are now seeing a tendency toward more non-traditional and offbeat detective writing. Authors who write about private eyes located in specific regions, such as, Chicago, Detroit and so on, have become popular.

The Private Eye Writers of America founded in 1981 is an organization devoted to P.I. detective fiction and is known for their annual Shamus Award.