One extra corpse

In this sequel to the excellent Scandal in Babylon (2021), it's been several months since the recently widowed Emma Blackstone came to Hollywood from Britain and promptly extricated her new employer, the famous movie star Kitty Flint, from a murder charge. Now, in May 1924, Emma feels like her new life in Tinseltown might finally be calming down. Until film director Ernst Zapolya, who happens to be one of Kitty's (many) former lovers, says he has a problem only Kitty can solve. And Kitty can't possibly do anything without Emma's help. Hambly, who's known primarily for a series of novels featuring the nineteenth-century sleuth Benjamin January (although she's published in multiple genres), knocks this second in her Silver Screen series out of the park. Everything feels just right: the characters are abundantly human, the mystery is beautifully constructed, and the Hollywood milieu is vividly realized. Readers who enjoyed the first Emma Blackstone novel will like this one every bit as much, if not more. Recommend the series to fans of Ed Ifkovic's series starring writer Edna Ferber.

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. Agent: Frances Collin, Frances Collin Literary. (Mar.)

Sex, drugs, scandal, and murder in Hollywood's early days. After losing most of her family during World War I, proper English widow and scholar Emma Blackstone ends up living with her flighty sister-in-law, Kitty Flint, better known as movie star Camille de la Rose. Emma acts as Kitty's secretary, dresser, confidante, and Pekinese wrangler and has also started writing scripts for historically inaccurate costume dramas. Currently pretending to be leading man Harry Garfield's amatory interest, Emma's actually in love with cameraman Zal Rokatansky--but that's not written in stone, since Kitty and everyone else Emma knows switch lovers constantly. A phone call from director Ernst Zapolya urgently asking to see Kitty plunges the women into danger. When they visit him in his bungalow on the Enterprise Studios lot, they're interrupted by studio boss Lou Jesperson, and Ernst never gets to tell Emma what he wants. In an era when workers have little protection from sharpshooters using real bullets because they look better on camera, it's no wonder that animals and people sometimes die on movie sets. Searching for Ernst to continue their meeting, Emma finds his body along with very young actress Nomie Carlyle in a dead faint. Since Ernst has been shot at point-blank range, his death was clearly no accident, but the show must go on. Nomie, who claims to have seen a woman in black nearby, fears that she's in the frame for the murder. Her appeal for help entangles Emma and Kitty with gangsters, the FBI, communists, and a plethora of narcissistic movie stars. A wild lineup of possible killers mingles with historically accurate info in a fast-paced mystery. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.