Dolores Hitchens: 5 books

“The fact is that during the last year I have killed three young people”: A pleasant waterfront community in California is subjected to a series of seemingly random killings, the victims all children. Dolores Hitchens’ intricately plotted novel explores a town’s collective terror, as the inhabitants...

Two teenagers fresh out of stir set their sights on what looks like easy money in Dolores Hitchens’s Fools’ Gold (1958)—and get a painful education in how quickly and drastically a simple plan can spin out of control. The basis for Jean-Luc Godard’s film Band of Outsiders, Fools’ Gold is...

“Are you trying to tell me you don’t want the job, Mr. Sader?”: It started as a missing persons case and grew more puzzling with the discovery of another strangely coincidental disappearance. Private eye Jim Sader finds himself deep in a multilayered intrigue revolving around oil and real estate...

"It had been timed and planned perfectly.” A convicted killer and the detective escorting him to prison aboard a Pullman train are the victims of a mysterious double assassination. When the detective is posthumously accused of corruption and criminal conspiracy, his widow embarks on a campaign...

"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. Sleep with a Slander is a novel in the classic hardboiled tradition, tough, compassionate, and tautly told.