Meet Elvira Slate. An ex-con from London who trades Holloway Prison to become a Hollywood private detective.
And welcome to Elvira’s thrilling 1940s world. Here you can find out all about our gripping mystery book series Elvira Slate Investigations, the characters, haunts and hideaways, and lots of other fabulous features.
Elvira Slate is the first 1940s noir female detective. She will stun fans of other 1940s sleuths like Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe.
No stranger to injustice herself, Elvira Slate brings grit, guts and determination to solving mindboggling cases. Set in a hidden Los Angeles world you have never seen before, each thrilling novel in the Elvira Slate Investigations mystery series is packed with unforgettable, diverse and original female characters.
This is Golden Age crime fiction that rejects the sexism, ageism, racism and homophobia of the most noir fiction of the Forties; this is inclusive crime feminist fiction.
Creator Helen Jacey says ‘Elvira Slate is the character I always wanted to meet, a 1940s noir female sleuth who is outsider heroine, crime buster, and feminist vigilante in one.’
New Book! Third Woman: Elvira Slate Investigations Book 4
Publication date 9th July 2026
The long-awaited fourth book in the Elvira Slate Investigations series is here!
Los Angeles, 1946. When a desperate woman claims to be the missing daughter of a deceased silent movie star, private eyes Elvira Slate and Beatty Falaise cynically believe she is just another phony out for a big inheritance payday. When the woman is found dead, Elvira investigates, leading her into the worlds of women’s magazines, half-way houses for female excons, and luxury sanatorium for the Hollywood elite.
In Third Woman, Elvira faces her most psychologically intense case yet, causing her to unravel and become consumed by her own subconscious desire and fears. Recovery is possible but can she save her own sanity without sacrificing the people who have protected her?
