Description de l’éditeur
Hollywood intrigue, glamor . . . and murder! Enter the roaring twenties in this thrilling historical mystery set in 1920s Hollywood.
“Excellent . . . Everything feels just right: the characters are abundantly human, the mystery is beautifully constructed, and the Hollywood milieu is vividly realized” Booklist Starred Review
LA, 1924. Between her new job writing painfully historically inaccurate scenes for Foremost Studios and wrangling her silent movie star sister-in-law Kitty out of the arms of her many suitors, young British widow Emma Blackstone is settling into new her life in the golden state of California.
So, when another one of Kitty’s old flames, renowned film director Ernst Zapolya, calls Emma and tells her it’s imperative that he meet with Kitty that morning, she’s not surprised. Until, that is, he adds that lives depend on it.
What can have scared him so badly—and what on earth does Kitty have to do with it?
When Kitty and Emma arrive at the set of Ernst’s extravagant new movie, they make a shocking—and deadly—discovery. Will they stay alive long enough to solve the murderous puzzle?
The gripping Silver Screen historical mystery series from New York Times bestselling author Barbara Hambly brings the sights and sounds of golden-age Hollywood to life. Perfect for fans of Jacqueline Winspear and Carola Dunn.
---
Read the full Silver Screen historical mystery series:
Scandal in Babylon
One Extra Corpse
Saving Susy Sweetchild
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in Roaring '20s Hollywood, Hambly's outstanding sequel to 2021's Scandal in Babylon showcases the author's wit and her compassion for the underdog. Tinseltown glamor girl Kitty Flint has rescued her widowed British sister-in-law, Emma Blackstone, from a dismal paid companionship in England. Now Kitty's constant companion, gofer, and Pekinese-brusher, plucky Emma wavers between longing for Oxford's dreaming spires, where she hoped to study archaeology, and her fascination with corrupt Hollywood and her cameraman lover. Then early one morning, director Ernst Zapolya, an old boyfriend of Kitty's, phones, wanting to speak to Kitty, but Emma tells him she isn't home. Ernst says it's about a matter "on which lives depend. Maybe many lives." A murder ensues. In the search for a killer, Kitty and Emma must deal with bootleggers, feuding Stalinists and Trotskyites, a lecherous leading man, and an agent from the U.S. Bureau of Investigation. Clever repartee and luscious local California color contrast with filmmaking fakery. Hambly vividly portrays a sad world of orphans and strangers, extras, and animals sacrificed for a director's whims, and desperate wannabes who fling themselves onto casting couches. This moving entry more than delivers on the promise of its predecessor.
