The Last Embrace

The critically acclaimed author of the Eve Diamond mystery series delivers her first standalone novel, a sexy, atmospheric and seductive thriller that transports readers to a fascinating, transitional time and place—1949 Los Angeles. 

Lily Kessler, a former stenographer and spy for the OSS, is asked by her late fiance's mother to find out what happened to his sister Kitty, an actress who has been missing from her Hollywood boarding house. Although the aspiring starlets at the house insist that Kitty is off somewhere furthering her career, the next day her body is found in a ravine below the Hollywood sign. Unimpressed with the local police, Lily investigates on her own. As she delves further into Kitty's life, she encounters fiercely competitive actors, gangsters, an eccentric special-effects genius, exotic denizens of Hollywood's nightclubs and a homicide detective who might distract her from her quest for justice. 

But the landscape in burgeoning, post-War Los Angeles can shift kaleidoscopically and Lily begins to see how easily a young woman can lose her balance and fall prey to the alluring city's dangers. 

 


THE LAST EMBRACE
Hardcover, Scribner, July 2008, ISBN-13: 978-1416584933