The Slater Ibanez Books

Hired to look into the theft of an expensive piece of jewelry, Slater soon finds himself entangled with a delusional high-end clothing manufacturer who sees the good in everyone, his snooty socialite wife, described as “damaged,” and her book-smart smoking-hot stepson. Which one of them is lying to Slater—and who, exactly, is the slippery con artist in the red miniskirt? From his new digs in the Fashion District, and with the help of a new business partner, Slater stalks wealthy lowlifes and their minions in boutiques and clubs, breaking into places he’s not supposed to be, winding up the middle of the desert in the middle of the night—and never hesitating to serve up a beatdown.

Investigating a million-dollar heist at a gallery in the Arts District, Slater can’t get a face-to-face with the owner, Eli, until he applies a little pressure, which leads to an evening invite to a tony mansion in the hills. Eli turns out to be a minor celebrity, physically flawless but obsessed with his own image, and flaky in that uniquely LA way. Gallery manager Pilar and her girlfriend are hiding something too, but Slater works to uncover the dirt with some surveillance and subterfuge, briefly posing as a straight guy to get some answers. Eli’s nephew Ty seems guileless at first, but what is he really up to at his massage-parlor job? Join Slater as he closes in on the truth, never hesitating to use his fists or his libido to cut through the secrets and deception. 

Interrupted late one night by Marisol, a desperate woman seeking help from his business partner, Slater agrees to go after her husband, Abner, a nebbishy accountant who’s making their divorce negotiations a nightmare. But why is Marisol traveling with a bodyguard, and why is she more interested in uncovering Abner’s secret assets than just warning him off? With Andy’s help, Slater infiltrates Abner’s office and befriends staffer Nolan on a quest to figure out where all the money is coming from. Unable to keep his libido in check, Slater winds up in bed with one of the principals, and struggles to keep the entanglement from clouding his judgment. After using his illicit Russian tech to surveille Abner and a degenerate religious nut, some covert deception with his elderly neighbor, and an excursion to a seedy bar in Albuquerque, Slater begins to unravel Marisol’s end game. Debilitated by his addictions dragging him closer to rock bottom, and wading through a sea of compulsive hookups with an array of guys, Slater is ultimately confronted with a moral dilemma that puts other people’s lives in the balance.

Two women who bear a remarkable resemblance to each other are brought together in a shelter for hillside residents fleeing the California wildfires. One of them, Gloria, asks Slater for help in tracking down the other, who’s using her identity to run a shady export business. As he digs into the imbroglio, Slater turns up a series of stolen luxury cars, a garage hidden in an old church, and a whole lot of suspicious shipping containers. Not the kind of guy to keep it in his pants, Slater is soon sleeping with sweet sexy Lincoln—a penny-ante lowlife and someone he knows he can’t trust. As Slater navigates a seedy slice of the underworld, the buff mechanic thoroughly clouds his judgment. Will Slater’s libido finally get him trapped in a situation he can’t punch his way out of?

Helping his business partner, Max, track down a bail jumper, Slater spends the night in a dusty Mojave Desert town. Things look different in the liminal space between LA and Vegas, like the bardo between lives, and Slater soon finds himself stalking a sleazy dermatologist who’s in a custody battle with another croaker for a seemingly worthless statue. With high-tech surveillance and a stealthy late-night break-in, bouncing between the metropolis and Sin City, Slater zeroes in on the truth while navigating some irksome emotional entanglements and his own sobriety.

Pulled in on a window-shade job to gather intel on a cheating spouse, Slater discovers there’s another observer on the case, prowling around the backyard with a camera. In the course of tracking him down, along with his target’s paramour, he soon finds out there’s more going on than run-of-the-mill infidelity. The bunco accountant sleeps with anyone he can persuade, regardless of gender, including Slater. And what is Tato really up to in his seedy little shipping store? Dark secrets come to the surface, and with help from a gallery clerk, Slater starts to put the pieces together, all the while trying to stay sober, keep one step ahead of the law, and sort out his feelings for Andy. In a bid to protect the naive European caught up in the intrigue, he comes up with an audacious plan that might just save the guy—and make Slater some serious bank.

When the narrator of his favorite podcast lands in the City of Angels and asks for help to find a missing colleague, Slater takes the case, and soon finds himself working undercover—as security on a trashy reality TV show, then as a paparazzo wielding a camera to snap images of a vapid pop star. As he circles closer to finding out what happened to the disappeared geologist, Slater trolls oil industry thugs, tangles with well-armed and tight-lipped witnesses, and digs into the city’s wealthy beachside enclaves. Things heat up when one of his targets attempts a frame job. Slater hustles to keep clear of it, all the while drinking way too much, dealing with lowlifes who tend to punch back, and struggling to keep his sex life out of his work.

Pulled into negotiating with a blackmailer as a favor to his mother, Slater soon finds there’s more going on than just her old friend’s inability to keep it in his pants. More victims of the grift turn up, including Etta, an educator with secrets of her own who teams up with Slater to run a con on one of the key players. Unraveling the mystery leads Slater into an old-school photo lab, a late-night stakeout in a bar wearing disguise drag, and pugilistic encounters with a button man and a sleazy property developer. Zeroing in on the extent of the grift, Slater’s plan to plant evidence—the only way to make sure the right person gets arrested—inevitably goes awry, leaving him with a dilemma that strikes to the heart of his already tenuous ethics.

Hired by banker Tad to track down a missing shrink, Slater soon finds there’s more going on, like the cryptic list Bianca left in her briefcase. An excursion to Bianca’s college leads to an intriguing ex-husband, a conspiracy theorist’s blog posts, and a suburban bungalow that’s been thoroughly sanitized, but Bianca remains elusive. Slater goes undercover with a gardening crew, and infiltrates a police investigation at a seedy hotel, but what’s the connection to Bianca’s list? Meanwhile his field operative, Etta, has taken up renovating the office as a part-time gig, bringing a degree of chaos for Slater and his business partner, Max. As the conspiracy theories get more bizarre, Slater gets closer to the truth, uncovering why Bianca is lying low, and maybe even why Tad has been playing him all along. Trolling the underbelly of the city and the high-desert wilderness, Slater zeroes in on the truth, never hesitating to hit on guys, throw a punch, or demand answers.

On an insurance job, Slater’s hunt for missing beneficiary Daniel takes him from wrangling the hardscrabble grifters of Skid Row to infiltrating the sleazy pieds-à-terre and private jets of the city’s moneyed elite. Eventually the quest takes Slater to New Mexico, where he rents an old pickup and revisits his equestrian past in pursuit of a shadowy group dedicated to flying saucers. Galliform, an old quarry, pops up in the sprawling desert, and Slater has to navigate around law enforcement, not quite willing to collaborate with them but intent on not winding up in the hoosegow. Hooking up with all the wrong guys and drinking way too much, Slater gradually starts to see what’s really going on. As Galliform increases the pressure and things heat up, Slater has to decide between doing what’s right and preserving his own neck.

Trying to sort out the cause of shipping delays at a mine in a remote part of Nevada, Slater grills the driver Bender and the armed guard Vitale, responsible for trucking the shipments to the city, and ferrets out some of their secrets. Not sure whether the enigmatic Hernán is a birthright airhead or an exquisitely talented con artist, against his better judgment Slater winds up in the sack with him. Finally heading to the mining camp in a cargo plane, Slater and his operative Etta meet more of the players and see some strange things in the vast empty desert. The trip back to LA takes an unexpected turn, leaving Slater with a dilemma that threatens his very survival.

While navigating a torrid affair with Pike, a hookup from a past job, Slater gets brought in on a case by Chila, an insurance company staffer. Like flexing a disused muscle, the romance dredges up things long forgotten, and Slater upends his life—moving house and making radical changes in his bad habits as he falls deeper into what he calls his “narrative complex” with Pike. On the insurance job Slater soon decides he’s been misled, as his client’s explanations start to look more improbable. Tracking down the beneficiary, Slater wades into the world of LA’s classic nightclubs and big bands, tangling with a femme fatale, a slick crooner, and a seedy crypto bro. When he uncovers the real reason Chila has him bird-dogging her target, he’s forced to choose where his loyalty lies. Slater manages to concoct intricate vengeance on the one who messed with him, but will his angry machinations mean he’s the one who winds up in jail instead?

Hired by a desk jockey to stalk her ex-husband and dig up dirt, Slater shadows the brawler Harold and his kid, trying in vain not to get too close and get made. Harold’s pushback sends Slater into a more compelling mystery, about Lance, a crypto bro who’s gone missing with a whole lot of dough. Working undercover on a film set, Slater tangles with aging child actors, the surreal world of reality television, and a bare-faced frame-up orchestrated by a cold-blooded player. As he struggles to stay one step ahead of an arms smuggler and the feds that are in pursuit of him, Slater also has to figure out how to navigate his burgeoning “narrative complex” love affair, and how to renegotiate his relationship with Andy. Never hesitating to slap a lowlife around, Slater follows Lance’s faint trail, trying to determine whether he’s alive somewhere enjoying his hoard or planted in a shallow grave in the mountains, all the while trying not to wind up there himself.

Pulled in on a case by a colleague from his former life in the landscaping world, Slater uses illicit surveillance gear to track a stolen blue agave to a seedy dive bar, where the patrons are not what they seem. Working undercover at a shady tequila factory, he starts to figure out what’s really going on, and uncovers a deeper grift preying on newcomers in Koreatown. Frustrated by his inability to shut down the racket, Slater collaborates with some of the victims, temporarily distracting himself by playing best man at a wedding, only to face an inadvertent turn of events that might send him to the hoosegow for good.

Hired to track down Finley, the missing boyfriend of tech worker Truax, Slater soon discovers that the job isn’t really what he was asked to do. The search for Finley leads him to an arcane book and the flying-saucer subculture, where a deep dive takes Slater out into the Mojave Desert, leaving him unsure of the precise boundaries of reality itself. With input from Doris and his operatives, and begrudging help from his romantic partner, Pike, to weasel him out of a jam, Slater cuts a dogged path to sort out what Truax really wants, and what Finley is really up to, all the while juggling high explosives, navigating his deepening narrative complex with Pike, and never failing to throw that punch.

A freelance investigator, Slater trolls the dark side of Los Angeles, rooting out insurance fraud, not afraid to use whatever means necessary to get things done, and not about to hold back with his fists. A queer antihero for a new age, Slater walks the line between ordinary life and the frayed fringes of society, keeping his balance with the back-channel support he gets from main squeeze Pike, business partner Max, and operatives Andy and Etta.

Hired by engineer Ben to find out why he’d been blackballed by a potential employer, Slater tries to uncover a nebulous nondisclosure agreement that Ben says he’s never seen. Sleazy lawyer Sybil is no help, and Slater digs into her grift with wannabe film director and card-room boss Dragan. An excursion to Santa Fe uncovers more dirt, and a trip to a tiny island in the Pacific leads to Slater scrambling to save his own neck. As he closes in on the truth, Slater gets entangled with the mesmerizing redhead Graham, clashes with boyfriend Pike over his sex habits, and endures a tragedy that takes out an old friend. What he ultimately unearths leaves him frustrated and Ben enraged—but Slater devises a final scheme that will either outsmart the mastermind or send them all to the hoosegow.

Freelance investigator Slater trolls the dark side of Los Angeles, rooting out insurance fraud, not afraid to use whatever means necessary to get things done, and not about to hold back with his fists. A queer antihero for a new age, Slater walks the line between ordinary life and the frayed fringes of society, keeping his balance with the back-channel support he gets from main squeeze Pike, business partner Max, and operatives Andy and Etta.

Slater meets Bucky on an airplane and gets drawn into a mystery—the guy can’t remember his name or where he is. As he works to track down his identity, Slater uncovers a blackmail scheme run by a pair of frat-boy grifters, and digging deeper, uses his Russian tech to run surveillance on the players, revealing a string of other victims. He befriends straitlaced smoke-show Walter, who turns out to have an explosive temper, and collaborates with a couple of the other patsies. With the help of a canny drag queen, he sets up a sting operation that might just shut down the extortion racket, if he can manage not to have it blow up in his face. Negotiating his evolving relationship with Pike, and keeping one step ahead of a series of belligerent lowlifes, Slater struggles with the world’s relentless demands on him and tries not to punch the wrong person in the face.

Freelance investigator Slater trolls the dark side of Los Angeles, rooting out insurance fraud, not afraid to use whatever means necessary to get things done, and not about to hold back with his fists. A queer antihero for a new age, Slater walks the line between ordinary life and the frayed fringes of society, keeping his balance with the back-channel support he gets from main squeeze Pike, business partner Max, and operatives Andy and Etta.