The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748) by Tobias Smollett is a picaresque adventure in which the protagonist recounts his resentment of his enemies and his thirst for revenge, which is sometimes satisfied. However, closer to the methods of A Ticket to the Boneyard are modern crime novels that put the reader into the mind of the murderer and let him act out the murderer's crimes.

The seductive woman who tempts the detective to relinquish his integrity has been a staple of hard-boiled detective fiction. In Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon (1930), Sam Spade is sexually tempted by the murderous Brigit O'Shaunnessy, but instead turns her in to the police. Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer practiced the ultimate rejection of the sexual temptress by cold-bloodedly shooting her. Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest (1929) is an example of a hard-boiled detective novel in which corruption seems endemic and the integrity of the detective...