One Extra Corpse
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4.8 • 5 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Hollywood intrigue, glamor . . . and murder: Enter the roaring twenties in this thrilling Silver Screen historical mystery, starring two very different female sleuths.
"Everything feels just right: the characters are abundantly human, the mystery is beautifully constructed, and the Hollywood milieu is vividly realized" Booklist Starred Review
"Hambly’s outstanding sequel to 2021’s Scandal in Babylon showcases the author’s wit and her compassion for the underdog" Publishers Weekly Starred Review
May, 1924. It's been seven months since young British widow Emma Blackstone arrived in Hollywood to serve as companion to Kitty Flint: her beautiful, silent-movie star sister-in-law. Kitty is generous, kind-hearted . . . and a truly terrible actress. Not that Emma minds; she's too busy making her academic parents turn in their graves with her new job writing painfully historically inaccurate scenarios for Foremost Studios, in between wrangling their leading lady out of the arms of her army of amorous suitors.
So when one of Kitty's old flames, renowned film director Ernst Zapolya, calls Emma and tells her it's imperative he meet with Kitty that morning, she's not surprised. Until, that is, he adds that lives depend on it. Ernst sounds frightened. But what can have scared him so badly - and what on earth does cheerful, flighty Kitty have to do with it?
Only Ernst can provide the answers, and Kitty and Emma travel to the set of his extravagant new movie to find them. But the shocking discovery they make there only raises further questions . . . including: will they stay alive long enough to solve the murderous puzzle?
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.
