One Extra Corpse

by Barbara Hambly

Overview

Hollywood intrigue, glamor . . . and murder: Enter the roaring twenties in this thrilling Silver Screen historical mystery, starring two very different female sleuths.

"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

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?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781448312702
Publisher:	Severn House
Publication date:	02/27/2024
Series:	Silver Screen Historical Mystery Series , #2
Edition description:	Large Print
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	5.79(w) x 8.74(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Barbara Hambly, though a native of Southern California, lived in New Orleans for a number of years while married to the late science fiction writer George Alec Effinger. Hambly holds a degree in medieval history from the University of California and has written novels in numerous genres.

Editorial Reviews

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

A must-read

Booklist Starred Review of Lady of Perdition

A fine entry in impressive series

Booklist on House of the Patriarch

Emma feels fresh: not merely another flapper-era amateur sleuth, but rather a vibrant, intelligent woman with whom readers will enjoy spending time

Booklist on Scandal in Babylon

2023-01-25
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.

Kirkus Reviews