I too like Highsmith. Have read two of the Ripleys (the books are good, the movies are bad, unless you watch Purple Noon from the 60's a french film based on the first Ripley book)

I like George Baxt, Dashiell Hammett, Sara Paretsky. A guilty pleasure is Rita Mae Browns, Sneaky Pie Brown mysteries where a cat and a corgi try to solve mysteries with their human , Harry, who is a post mistress in a small town. Richard Mark Zorbo's Tom & Scott mysteries are fun to read but arent always the best at the mystery part, rather cartoonish and easily wrapped up conveniently. Their is a Scotish writer named Jack Dickson who has a series set on a former cop. Very dirty, violent and lots of sex. Can be a bit hard to read with the Scotish accent. And there is alot of sex, and sex and bloody violence.

i love chandler and thompson too. and odd possible inclusion - and one of my absolute favorite authors - paul bowles. vivid twisting compelling stuff. and also maybe dennis lehane.

one book i bought recently and have heard raves about is philip kerr's "Berlin Noir: March Violets; The Pale Criminal; A German Requiem" have yet to read it though.

www.amazon.com/Berlin-Noi.../ref=sr_1_1

purple noon is definitely one of the best highsmith adaptations. great nino rota score too. besides strangers on a train the other best adaptation for my $ is the french version of cry of the owl.

you might wanna check out "Detectives Beyond Borders: A Forum for International Crime Fiction" too:

detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/

You've mentioned some favorites. In addition I like Janwillem Van de Wetering and the team of Maj Sjovall & Per Wahloo. The former wrote a series about the Amsterdam murder squad and the latter, a couple's collaboration, she a poet and he a journalist, about the Stockholm murder squad. The characters in both are quite complex and nothing like the hardboiled police procedural style as it's developed in the US.

Here's a nice long bit from david goodis, most famous for shoot the piano player. this is from night squad:

He pushed the empty shot glass toward the bartender. The refill came and he poured it down his throat. While he waited for the liquor to hit him, another hitter got there first, an invisible finger nudging him, gently urging him to turn his head. He turned slowly, not fully knowing why. For an instant he focused on an empty wall, and then gazed blankly at the door leading to the back room. The invisible finger kept nudging and his head kept turning. Finally he was looking at the table in the far corner near the door leading to the back room.

She sat at the table, alone, drinking beer. Her head was lowered as she set the glass on the table and reached slowly for the quart-size bottle. That ain't nothin', he told himself. That's just another thirsty skirt who likes to sit alone and drink beer. Ain't a damn thing there for you to look at.

But he went on looking at Lillian. The invisible finger was pointing at her and saying, there she is, that's your wife.

You better check the calendar, he said to the unseen pointer. That broad ain't been my wife for a long time. That broad and me, we're a long way off from each other.

Then why you lookin' at her?

He didn't try to answer that. He sat looking, as though there were no other faces in the room. The feeling in his chest hit harder than the gin hitting his head. He said to himself, we get just one short life to live, and ain't it a wonder the way we louse it up? The deals we make, it adds up, I swear, to one big joke that gets no laughs at all. You come right down to it, there's some of us who ought to be wearin' dunce caps seven days a week. We're like those double-jointed clowns who got that special talent for twistin' themselves all around so they finally kick their own teeth. But this don't hurt in the teeth. This hurts in the blood, and it hurts real bad in the thing that pumps the blood.

"Fill it," he said to the bartender. When the gin came he drank it with his eyes shut tightly, grimacing in a kind of anguish and surrender as though he was drinking cyanide.