One Extra Corpse

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.)