One Extra Corpse

The second in the Silver Screen historical mystery series, this was a fun outing with lots of Hollywood studio gossip, name-dropping of historical figures, the antics of the author's fictional creations, and an interesting mystery with a lot of separate plotlines the author expertly brought together at the conclusion. I particularly enjoyed our heroine' Emma's continued attempts to try to bring logic to increasingly ridiculous suggested plots by the studio directors. A vivid portrait of an industry in a time of change with all the fun of a mystery to solve.

An Unexpected Turn..
The second in the Silver Screen historical mystery series, 1920’s set Hollywood and seven months on from when Emma Blackstone, a British widow began working for actress and sister-in-law the flighty Kitty Flint. Work continues as normal but when a former lover of Kitty’s turns up events take an unexpected turn and Emma and Kitty soon find themselves in deadly danger. An enjoyable mystery, nicely written, with credible cast of characters, a well described backdrop and an atmospheric, solid sense of place. Engaging, escapist and entertaining reading

I like historical mysteries, and I thought the cover of this book looked eye-catching, so it sparked my interest.

It was different from what I initially expected, but I enjoyed it. From the cover design, I was expecting a story with a dark tone, maybe something leaning towards the Gothic genre.

The story was more light-hearted than I expected, quite fun and quirky. I wouldn't say that the characters were what I initially expected either, but I liked them, and found them amusing.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for a free copy to review.

Reason I read this book was because the blurb caught my eye and that's how I pick books and honestly glad I picked this one. I couldn't put it down and it kept me pulled into it. I'm unsure if anyone in my friend circle would read this but I plan on asking them because it was a good book to read. 5 star book. And yes I do recommend it.

Really enjoyable Hollywood 1920s mystery. Although the second in the series, it’s easily read as a stand-alone. I liked this book very much. Emma is a widowed Englishwoman, now living with her silent movie star sister-in-law as a friend and companion. Emma provides a perfect outsider’s perspective on 1920s Hollywood. The author’s research shows in the well-crafted writing amid the mystery of who killed the famous director. I look forward to the next in this series.

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

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?"

Hollywoodland calls to me. Always.

A really enjoyable read that really evoked the period in which it is set in. Gripping, mysterious and unpredictable. I couldn't put it down.

Hollywood, 1924: it’s seven months since widowed English academic Emma Blackstone became assistant, secretary, dog brusher, and companion to her “beautiful… glittering and careless” actress sister-in-law, Kitty Flint. Emma receives a call from director, Ernst Zapolya, asking her to convey Kitty to his set. He has something urgent, un-Hollywood-related, to divulge to her. Ernst barely gets one word out before the studio chief demands his attention on set, and amidst the explosions and mayhem, he is shot dead. Kitty, meanwhile, finds herself holding an envelope full of cash that Ernst stuffed into her hands just before he left. Fingers point at his movie-star ex-wife, but the studio chief isn’t going to allow the press to drag her through the mud. Attention falls on an innocent young actress. Kitty is determined to clear the girl’s name, and discover why Ernst gave her all this cash.

This clever mystery speaks to aspects of early Hollywood, including its dangerous sets, lack of safety concerns (sharpshooters using real bullets?), cost overruns, Russian infiltration and communist propaganda. Kitty and Emma are tailed, attempts are made on their lives, and their house is broken into while the police dither about accusing the wrong person. Emma’s cameraman boyfriend studies Ernst’s battle footage for clues; the stunning, egg-fu-yung-and-spiked-coffee-devouring Kitty turns out to have much more between the ears than her atrocious acting would suggest; and Emma is obsessed with script-rewrites from whimsical directors, requesting that first-century Briton slave girls become Parisian pre-WWII femme fatales―overnight. My one niggle is Hambly’s frequent overuse of hyphens and brackets within sentences, but with a great deal of ironic wit, her critique of Hollywood manages to turn the so-called razzle-dazzle into laughable mundane boredom. Emma’s scholarly commentary on script alterations is hilarious, and there’s a host of memorable characters, including Kitty’s three adorably irritating pekes.

The second Emma Blackstone silver screen mystery kept this reader following right along. Emma is feeling more in control and less like a ship adrift. Kitty plays her part to perfection and Zal is a steadying influence on them both. The mystery of who killed the director is very nicely done with plenty of appropriate clues scattered about. The setting of the story in the midst of the first Red scare and the splintering of the Communist world was an interesting element that added depth to the story. Plenty of action and the chase sequence was very nicely done. In all a very good read!

Thanks Netgalley and Severn House for the opportunity to read this title!

Thank you to Netgalley and Severn House for access to this arc.

Though I still miss the WTH fun of “Bride of the Rat God,” I’m just happy that there is more of Emma, Zal, and the dazzling and irrepressible Kitty being dragged into solving murders again as they did in “Scandal in Babylon” while they make silent movies in Hollywood.


There’s a lot going on in the book. Emma is being wooed for a “lavender marriage” to cover the romance of a pair of Hollywood stars. Kitty is her usual ebullient self – filming all day and partying all night with Hollywood elite at glamorous places. Emma is trying to fit in rewriting scenes – having given up getting the director to realize that Julius Caesar couldn’t fight a tiger in Britain to save a young Christian girl as tigers weren’t native there and Jesus Christ wouldn’t be born until decades after Caesar was murdered – while also taking care of Black Jasmine, Buttercreme, and Chang Ming, and hauling all of Kitty’s necessities to the studio while fighting off an actor who won’t take “no” for an answer.


There is a lot of description in the book. Places, people, how to film movies, how to get casting directors and directors to notice you if you’re a young aspiring actor – things really haven’t changed much about that part. This is also before Humane Societies, stunt coordinators, and special effects directors began overseeing filming to try and ensure that no one was harmed – because if real bullets and explosives made a scene look better, the real things would be used. Learning more about old Hollywood in the Golden Era is something I find fascinating and also horrifying. Need to keep your actors going for 18 hours of filming a day – dust the snack peanuts with cocaine. What do actors use to relax after that schedule – lots of bootleg booze and don’t worry about the cops as they’ve been paid off to allow the bootleggers to bring it in by boat. If extras have been injured or killed while filming a scene, pay ’em off and if anyone objects to working conditions, then label them Reds and Commies.

As (from the time mentioned in the blurb) only a month has elapsed since the events of “Babylon,” it’s not surprising that Emma still has a bit of “fish out of water” reactions to Hollywood and the movie studios while still missing bits and pieces of her old life in Oxford. She’s clever enough to hit upon a means to get away from the rapey actor and then devise some subtle revenge on him that has director Madge Burdon skipping with glee. Actual Hollywood actors and directors are “bit players” in the book but not just to shoehorn in famous names. Erich von Stroheim’s legendary budget issues and dictatorial directing style and a glamorous party at Pickfair (they always have the best food) serve a purpose in the plot.


Similarly to the murder mystery in “Babylon,” the clues and characters behind the killing are carefully doled out, plot threads are deftly woven in, and everything is lightly hinted at rather than used to beat readers over the head. The Reason behind the call to Kitty which sets everything off makes sense. Emma’s attempt to put together what she knows happens gradually and naturally. The final conflict is a humdinger and once again involves a businessman who specializes in supplying imported liquor with an added character who can’t resist Tootsie Rolls. Plus there are Black Jasmine, Buttercreme, and Chang Ming who will defend those they love, bark ferociously at those they suspect, and attempt to cage treats and belly rubs from just about everyone. B+

I have really enjoyed Barbara Hambly's writing fantasy and historical mysteries for many years. It is no different with this relatively new series (this is the second addition and the first I have read). Set in the 1920s, it really feels like you have stepped back in time to the back lot of a silent film company. Emma Blackstone and her sister-in-law, Kitty Flint, a movie star, investigate the murder of a director in the middle of filming a battlefield scene.

Hambly has nailed the atmosphere, along with great characters and a behind-the-scene look at the difficulties of filming in the early days of movies. Egos clash, romance and trysts in real life as well as on the screen, directors, producers and movie company owners ruthlessly pursue their agendas with little care for decency or human life. Money, fame, and the fear of Communism create lots of suspects and plenty of red herrings. It will keep you guessing until the end.

The only real drawback for me were the amount of names thrown out, particularly in the beginning. If you don't have some knowledge of actors and mover and shakers from this time period you can easily get lost in trying to figure out who is important who is just screen dressing for the atmosphere.

If you are looking for something a bit different than many of the 1920s cozies out there, you should read this. Hambly is a great writer and will take you to a different time when the glamor was real and the nastiness behind it was also. But there was also real feelings and human warmth too.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in return for an honest opinion.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Severn House for this Advanced Reader Copy and the opportunity to review “One Extra Corpse.” All opinions and comments are my own.

If you’d like a crash course in silent screen movie-making and a whole lot of Hollywood name-dropping, then this is the book for you. You get that and a lot more in “One Extra Corpse,” in which our heroines Emma Blackstone and her sister-in-law, Kitty Flint AKA famed movie star Camille de la Rose are once again up to the task of solving a murder, this time a director. What you won’t get is a quick trip from Point A (the murder) to Point B (solving the murder). And lots of Latin quotations, just as in the first book in the series. Be prepared for that, too.

So, who had it in for Ernst Zapolya enough to plug him while he was busy directing one of his enormous action scenes? Complete with live explosions and live bullets, no less. The Powers That Be have picked out somebody already -- a no-talent starlet -- but Emma and Kitty won’t allow that to happen. So, we’re off, to visit every town in Southern California, I swear, in search of a killer.

There are a lot of great character sketches to be had within these pages. It was an amazing time, these early days of Hollywood, and readers will get to “meet” a whole bunch of movie people. It’s also not a very pretty picture, be prepared for that, too. As one of the characters says about another, “She’s been in more laps in this town than a napkin.” You get the idea, I’m sure.

Emma does most of the investigating, going through the sets and visiting places; you won’t have to use much of your imagination, because the author describes it all for you. I could have done with less of this.

From the beginning, Zapolya had something he wanted to tell Kitty/Camille. You’ll eventually find out what that was, which fits in with what became an issue for the movie industry in the decades following our story. And that murder? Well, there’s questions, and answers, and ruminations, a whole lot that’s rather sad. Life goes on, for some, and it’s time for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.

“One Extra Corpse” is entertaining, the murder mystery somewhat secondary to the descriptions of early movie-making. It did take a while to get to the reason for it all. Having said that, I do enjoy seeing what Emma and Kitty get up to. There’s always another story to follow in Tinseltown, I’m sure.

Murder, glamour and total mayhem on a movie set are some of the compelling ingredients that the reader will encounter in this new addition to Ms Hambly's marvellous Silver Screen Historical Mystery Series, a delicious literary cocktail full of flamboyant characters, sparkling dialogues and lots of fascinating details about Hollywood during the Roaring Twenties...

An adrenaline-fueled whodunit that kept me on the edge of my seat from the get-go and a highly entertaining novel that really deserves to be discovered and enjoyed without any moderation whatsoever!

Many thanks to Severn House and Netgalley for this terrific ARC!

A really enjoyable mystery set in silent era Hollywood. I was expecting more of a noir ambience but this was more amusing and quirky. This is well-written an well-researched and provided an immersion in a world I knew little about, describing how old Hollywood worked.

Thanks to the careful research done by the author you will find yourself catapulted into the Roaring Twenties consisting of glamour, gossip and intrigue set on the sets of the firsts silent film movies. Right from the start you will be well aware of the careful research done by the author: infact you will be clear about all the enormous work done by those behind the camera or how the sets were dangerous places for the extras,who in order to ensure the success of the scene,put their lives at risk.
The mystery part,on the other hand,presents the clues and characters evenly distributed thus managing to skillfully intertwine the secondary storylines with the main one thus making it more intricate and dense. I also really liked the way Emma managed to solve the mystery precisely because it was natural,gradual and full of twists and turns!
At first I had a bit of a hard time steering behind all the characters and their back aground, but going forward it turned out to be an electrifying , sparkling , historically accurate and guilt-filled read within the landscape of an ever-changing industry. In the end I want to thank netgalley for the arc copy

I've enjoyed some of Barbara Hambly's sci-fi and fantasy books in the past and was glad to find this series. This is the second story in the Silver Screen Historical Mysteries, set in the Hollywood of the roaring 20s. I had read the earlier book and enjoyed it enough to want to read the second one. I have to confess, I had some difficulty following the various names, nicknames, stage names and aliases of some of the characters, which made it challenging to follow the plot at times, but I blame that on my own lack of ability to concentrate. No spoilers here, but the plot took a twist toward the end that I didn't see coming. All in all, an enjoyable read, which I can happily recommend.

What immediately struck me with this book is how completely Hambly catches the giddy, hedonistic whirl of parties, assignations and manoeuvring going on. There are actors desperate for better parts… producers and directors desperate to make their current film stand out from the increasing competition… those desperate to keep their film star reputations intact… And in the middle of all this is war widow Emma Blackstone, companion and assistant to her beautiful sister-in-law, Kitty Flint, who parties as hard as the best of them – regularly turning up at the set having not been home the previous night and relying on Emma to get her ready for the day’s filming.

I got a ringside seat at the gossip, the constant affairs and some of the problems with the filming – the hilarious rewrites that Emma is asked to make are a running joke throughout the book. I found the world beguiling and wonderfully glamorous – but beneath the glamour lies a darker tone. Having to sleep with the director and/or producer on whichever film she’s on is part of the job, as far as Kitty is concerned – even as a major star. Filming is intensive with actors taking all sorts of stimulants to keep going – the most common being bootleg liquor, but there are also drug dealers on set. And action scenes are often horribly dangerous, with horses and extras regularly being injured and sometimes killed, with virtually no consequences, as the film industry at this time isn’t held to account.

So when there is a murder during the filming of a major explosion – the studio is determined to pin the crime on the first person who discovers the body. However, Kitty and Emma aren’t so sure. To be honest – the crime and whodunit wasn’t a major consideration for me, as I was dazzled by the vividness of the world Hambly depicts. It rings true, too. Having read David Niven’s wonderful autobiography, The Moon’s a Balloon, I got a similar sense of a hectic lifestyle where people were determined to have a good time, no matter what.

That said, the murder mystery does steadily become more important, particularly after Kitty and Emma are targeted. I found the denouement to be poignant and all too believable. Once more, Hambly delivers a gripping historical drama featuring a likeable protagonist. Highly recommended for fans of 1920s murder mysteries. While I obtained an arc of One Extra Corpse from the publishers via Netgalley, the opinions I have expressed are unbiased and my own.
9/10

One Extra Corpse, like its predecessor Scandal in Babylon, strips away the phony tinsel of Hollywood to find the real dirty, bloody tinsel underneath.

It’s 1924, just one month after the events of the first book in the Silver Screen Historical Mystery series, Emma Blackstone has mostly settled herself into her new life in Hollywood as her movie star sister-in-law’s general factotum and keeper of all secrets as well as caretaker of both Kitty Flint AND her three pampered Pekingese dogs, Chang Ming, Black Jasmine, and Buttercreme.

Managing Kitty also comes with a bit of tinsel-making of Emma’s own. She’s regularly employed – and sometimes just plain used – as a scene doctor for movie scripts during these frenetic-paced early days of the silver screen – and occasionally as a social prop for a gay actor who needs to be seen with a woman to protect his image.

Days that may be silent on film but are filled with noise, chatter and above all gossip behind the scenes. Gossip that all too frequently includes who’s sleeping with whom this week – as opposed to last week or next week – as the star-making machinery of Hollywood seems to be fueled by equal parts sex and addiction.

The addiction of entirely too many actors to their drugs of choice – frequently provided by their studios, the addiction of the studios to making money and controlling their actors so that they can keep making that money, and the addiction of the general public to movies as well as gossip about their favorite stars.

No one wants a dead body on the set, not when that dead body belongs to a big name movie director and when it’s all too clear that the man was murdered. Quite possibly by his over-acting, downright histrionic current wife. Who had plenty of motives and no alibi.

But she’s a star in her own right, and her studio doesn’t want to ruin her box-office potential. She makes them too much money to be a murderer, and the police have been paid plenty to make sure she doesn’t get labeled as one. The studios have handed the police a neat-and-tidy case with a tailor-made perpetrator. They can afford to sacrifice an extra to keep one of their stars out of trouble.

Which is where Emma and Kitty get themselves involved. They were on the scene because the victim had something important he wanted to tell Kitty. Who was one of his many, many ex-lovers, just as he was one of hers. Of course, he was killed before he could tell them whatever-it-was, otherwise there wouldn’t be a case to investigate.

And there so very much is. Not the case of a jealous wife, tempting though it was. Or at least Emma is sure that isn’t the solution – not when the Bureau of Investigation (the FBI before it became the FBI) seems to have searched Kitty’s house looking for something, and mysterious thugs make multiple attempts to murder one or both of them.

All while a desperate young woman is on the hook for a murder that she couldn’t possibly have committed. Or could she?

Escape Rating A: This was surprisingly meaty for a book whose cover kind of screams camp with vamp, but then, the silent movie era did have to maximize flash and style to convey emotion. After all, the characters couldn’t use their own words, or even the scriptwriter’s words.

What makes this story so good, and kind of rocks the reader on their heels at the end, is the way that it gets deep into how the sausage-machine of moviemaking worked then – and probably still does now to a greater extent than we like to think about while we’re watching the latest hit.

This story looks hard at the human cost of all that “entertainment”. When that director is killed on set, he dies in the middle of directing a climactic battle scene in his last picture. A scene that uses real bullets fired hopefully above the heads of real people while the inevitable stampeding horses are harnessed into a rig that is guaranteed to bring them down in a crash of heavy bodies on spindly legs that will look great on film. That some of those extras will need to be carried off on stretchers, and that some of the horses will be crippled and shot afterwards, is considered just part of the cost of making movies.

Nobody cares who or how many die as long as it can be hushed up and the show goes on. Which is what the case turns out to be all about in the end.

But it middles in a whole lot of the real issues of the time, in Hollywood and elsewhere. Particularly, in this case, the growing “Red Scare” about communism and socialism in Hollywood, and the lengths the government will go to suppress it, the adults who briefly flirted with it in their misspent youths will go to escape their pasts, and how far some will go to keep their secrets – or the secrets of their own, currently imploding, government.

As the story whipsaws the reader back and forth from the froth of Hollywood to the hamfisted murder investigation to the all-too-real threats to Emma’s and Kitty’s life and liberty, it’s impossible to stop turning pages to find out not just whodunnit but what they done and why they did it.

Most people read mysteries for what has been called “the romance of justice”, that guarantee that good will triumph and evil will get its just desserts. One Extra Corpse doesn’t deliver on the whole of that promise, but it delivers as much justice as was possible and definitely satisfies in that delivery just the same.

Barbara Hambly's newest series is set in the early days of Hollywood. The glamour and glitz of the movie industry hide dirty secrets, potential scandals, and now murder. Kitty Flint, movie star, and her brainy sister-in-law Emma Blackstone are swept up into the murder of a director on the set of his movie. Everyone seems to want to bury the evidence except for Kitty, Emma, and Emma's cameraman boyfriend.

This novel is sheer fun. I enjoyed riding around 1920's southern California with the characters, and being chased by bootleggers, drug dealers and G-men!

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC!
I love Barbara Hambly's books, would give this one 4.5 out of 5.
This is the second book of a new series set in Hollywood in the mid-1920s at the height of the silent film industry. The protagonist, an English widow, has become the assistant, by a series of events, to her sister-in-law who is a b-level movie star.
Like the first instalment, the two of them kind of 'trip' over murders, in which they're peripherally involved, and they have to investigate amongst the gossip and parties and filming and tabloids.
Great fun!
Like every Barbara Hambly I've ever read, you think you have an expectation of the milieu, or the plot, and the author takes you in completely different directions. The dogs are definitely coming into their own as characters too!
Recommend to fans of detailed historicals with women protagonists.

I've read quite a few novels set in 1920s Hollywood, but this had a very unique voice. It seemed to be very well-researched: it used specific terms that sounded genuine to the era if different from what we would say today (for example, she used scenario instead of script). It presented life on stage in a way that I never thought of but makes a lot of sense for the time (the scenes where actors and extras worked on stage, or depicting how the stages were built rang very genuine). Everything was similar and yet different from everything I've read so far in novels set in 1920s Hollywood - and I really enjoyed this.

The cast of characters was very interesting, and the recurring cast was endearing. I wish I had read the first novel when I had the chance.
Thing is, the blurb didn't present the book properly, in my opinion. I read this one by chance, and I remember skipping the first because it gave me a sense of romance more than anything else. The blurb for this one felt the same! The story is more about the mystery and the historical setting than romance.

If there was something that didn't convince me completely, it was the mystery. I couldn't figure out anything while reading (and this is not necessarily bad), but even when it was revealed, it sounded too convoluted.
More than one thread intertwined - something I see is becoming common in recent mysteries - and I'm not sure it was necessary. It ended up feeling unlikely and over the top, which is a pity, seen as the rest of the book sounds so realistic.

The end was kind of problematic, in my opinion, and it didn't completely convince me.

But apart from these final notes, it was a very enjoyable book, well-written.

I'd just add, as a personal note, that I was surprised to read Barbara Hambly. When I saw her name, I thought, wait, what? The fantasy writer?
I remembered her name from my teenage years when I devoured fantasy books like I eat bread. I had to google her, and yes, it's the same person.
It was such a funny feeling to find someone from so long ago (well, for me) and in a new environment. But it was nice.