Just Finished Reading… One Extra Corpse by Barbara Hambly. Edinburgh: Severn House, 2023

 

Some years ago, I read another Barbara Hambly novel, Bride Of The Rat God. It was a dark fantasy set in 1920s Hollywood. The heroine, Norah Blackstone, was a British widow who had come to live with her sister in law, Christine, a silent movie star. She was wearing a cursed Manchu necklace used for sacrifice and Norah, Christine and cameraman Alec, Norah’s boyfriend, have to prevent the demon from killing Christine. That novel, which is very good, is out of print except as an audiobook. The audiobook is also excellent.

However, more recently the author has taken the characters and setting and used them for a series of murder mysteries with no fantasy elements. The first, Scandal In Babylon, was published in 2021. Here is my review. 

https://suebursztynski.blogspot.com/2021/08/just-finished-reading-scandal-in.html

This new book takes place in 1924, a few months after Scandal In Babylon. The heroine, Emma Blackstone, and her sister-in-law Kitty Flint go to see director Ernst Zapolya, who has asked Kitty to come to his office at another studio to discuss something urgent. 

Before he can tell them what it is, he is murdered. Of course! 

The rest of the novel has Emma, Kitty and cameraman Zal, Emma’s boyfriend(he was Alec in Bride Of The Rat God) investigating the murder, while ducking and dodging murder attempts on themselves! 

The novel is good fun, and has a lot of detail about how silent films were made. The details are important because of some of the reasons for murder, but it’s fascinating to learn what was behind the silent films of the 1920s. 

There is even an appearance by real life director Erich von Stroheim. 

I bought this in ebook, but I imagine you can also find it in print easily enough, and if you buy it on Amazon, you can get the audiobook with it, very cheaply. If you haven’t read the first book in the series, it’s probably best to read that first.