The 9 Dark Hours

In this Golden Age mystery, a bored woman looking for adventure gets entangled in a dangerous plot when she finds a stranger in her apartment.

It’s 1941, and San Francisco is pulsing with excitement—with hot jazz, ice-cold cocktails, and the ever-present threat of war. For Cameron Ferris, newly arrived from Tiny Town, Oregon, a seat on the sidelines is thrilling enough, so she’s delighted with her boring job as a file clerk in a warehouse. For a while. But now the while’s up, and Cameron is starting to feel like one of life’s wallflowers. For good or for ill, life is about to provide a cure, in the form of a strange man living in her apartment, kidnappers hanging out on the fire-escape, and all traces of her life scrubbed clean. Who is Cameron Ferris? Has she become so unspeakably dull that she simply disappeared? And what can an invisible person do to foil a gang of kidnappers? A highly unusual, thoroughly unnerving tale that sings with the music of the period.

“A writer of utterly delightful tales that mixed a strong sense of fair play, a wry wit, and a shrewd sense of domestic relationships.” —Sarah Weinman, editor of Women Crime Writers: Four Suspense Novels of the 1940s