Sleep with Slander

Private eye Jim Sader returns in a hard-hitting thriller set in the dark corners of sunny southern California

"One of the best hard-boiled private-eye novels ever written." —Sarah Weinman, The New York Times

"You're playing with a child's life": The search for a kidnapped boy leads private detective (and ex-alcoholic) Jim Sader through a labyrinth of well-hidden family secrets and into the heart of an elaborate and malevolent deception. With little to go on--a tight-lipped client, an anonymous letter, a mother who is supposed to be dead--Sader must rely on his wits to find the child even as he outraces the demons that dog him. Sleep with a Slander has been called "the best hard-boiled private eye novel written by a woman—and one of the best written by anybody" (1001 Midnights: The Aficionado's Guide to Mystery and Detective Fiction). "One of the best hard-boiled private-eye novels ever written." —Sarah Weinman, The New York TimesDolores Hitchens (1907-1973) was a highly prolific author of novels and a play who wrote under several names, best known for a number of detective series including the Jim Sader novels and the "Cat" novels featuring elderly amateur sleuth Rachel Murdock. She was one of eight pioneers in the genre collected in the 2015 Library of America edition, Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & 50s.

Steph Cha is the author of Your House Will Pay and the Juniper Song crime trilogy. She's an editor and critic whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. A native of the San Fernando Valley, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two basset hounds.Jim Sader Mystery #2