Mystery Review: Sleep with Slander effectively establishes a sense of urgency from the first page that carries through to the last. The second (and final) novel in the Jim Sader series follows the earlier Sleep with Strangers (1955), but here his partner is out of the picture, he doesn't fall in love, and at 50 years old everything is that much more difficult than before. Sleep with Slander is just as good and maybe a bit better than the first. Again there are surprise twists and turns, bodies appear unexpectedly, and every character introduced seems suspect and untrustworthy (though interesting and well-sketched). The witnesses often have competing motives and Sader hits many dead ends as the frustration and urgency mount. As in the first novel, it's only dogged persistence that pays off, though here there's an even heavier emphasis on artful psychological elements. Sleep with Slander would've been a good movie. As good as they are, the two Sader novels just don't have the existential dread and ennui of the best noir fiction, though they had the makings of an excellent series of detective novels, if we'd just had the chance to see where Dolores Hitchens might've taken her ideas. [4★]
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