The Last Embrace

May 12, 2008
Lily Kessler, a former OSS officer, fearlessly treads Hollywood's meanest streets in search of her late fiancé's actress sister, Kitty Hayden, who's gone missing while seeking juicy parts and wealthy lovers, in this evocative stand-alone set in 1949 from Hamilton (Prisoner of Memory
and four other Eve Diamond thrillers). Soon after moving into Kitty's grungy boarding house, Lily learns Kitty's been murdered, like the famous “Black Dahlia” not long before, and she puts all her skills—intuition, deduction, inference and logic—into unraveling the crime. Gang wars, police corruption, shady reporters and a passionate new love interest, Det. Stephen Pico, can't stop Lily. Despite some papier-mâché minor characters and some celluloid motivations, this torrid, down-and-dirty exposé of the postwar entertainment industry includes enough special effects to make all that glitter look—temporarily—like 24-carat gold.

May 1, 2008
Its 1949, and Lily Kessler, former OSS spy, is home from Europe and visiting her hometown of Los Angeles to look for the sister of her late fianc', an aspiring actress who has disappeared. Lily finds the missing Kitty quickly enough, but she is in the morgue, the first victim of a Black Dahlialike serial killer who seems to be preying on the residents of a Hollywood boardinghouse for actresses. Lilly takes Kittys room in the house, starts investigating, and quickly becomes a target. Hamilton, author of the contemporary Eve Diamond series, capably mixes and matches here, combining a staple of womens melodrama (career girls in a boardinghousesee Haines Winter of Her Discontent)with an edgy evocation of postwar, hard-boiled L.A., la James Ellroy. Its an unlikely combination of sweet and savory, but Hamilton makes it work with a engaging heroine and a cast of quirky supporting characters who seem to have walked off the set of Sunset Boulevard. The details click into place smoothly, the struggling actresses hit their marks, and even the obligatory romance avoids the smarm factor. Ellroy meets womens fiction? Why not?(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)