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The Last Embrace
Los Angeles 1949. A city of big dreams and dark shadows... Lily Kessler, a former stenographer and spy for the OSS, comes to Los Angeles to find her late fiancé's sister Kitty, an actress who is missing from her Hollywood boardinghouse. The next day, Kitty's body is found in a ravine below the Hollywood sign. Unimpressed by the local police, Lily investigates on her own. As she delves into Kitty's life, she encounters fiercely competitive starlets, 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 L.A. 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.... With vibrant characters and unerring insight into the desires and dark impulses that can flare between men and women, The Last Embrace showcases Denise Hamilton at the height of her storytelling powers as she transports readers to a fascinating, transitional time in one of America's most beguiling cities.
401 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 1, 2008
10 people are currently reading
176 people want to read
About the author
Denise Hamilton
32 books117 followersDenise Hamilton is a Los Angeles-based writer-journalist whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Wired, Cosmopolitan, Der Spiegel, and New Times. A reporter for the L.A. Times for ten years, she covered not only L.A. stories, but also the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, the breakup of the Soviet Union, and burgeoning youth movements in Japan. A Fulbright scholar, she taught in the former Yugoslavia during the Bosnian War. She lives in a Los Angeles suburb with her husband and two young children. Her first novel, The Jasmine Trade, received wide acclaim and was a finalist for the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, and WILLA Awards.
Series:
* Eve Diamond Mystery
Series:
* Eve Diamond Mystery
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
September 21, 2008
Why isn't Ms. Hamilton a bigger name? She's as good as Robert Crais and Michael Connelly in evoking Los Angeles in all its glory and seediness. This book has a great noir feel and setting (1940s Hollywood) and an interesting protagonist (a female former OSS spy) to guide us through the story. The plot is twisty and suspenseful, dealing with a hopeful time and broken dreams. It makes one feel both wistful and glad that those times are gone.
October 17, 2013
The idea looked interesting, and I like the era, but the writing put me off. One of the things that will always stop me reading a book is clunkiness and melodrama. This veers into both - not all the time, but enough to make me not want to bother.
July 28, 2008
By THOMAS PERRY
In 2001, an editor at Scribner sent me the manuscript of a first novel called TheJasmine Trade by a Los Angeles Times reporter named Denise Hamilton. It was an intriguing, contemporary story built around some Asian teenagers whose parents left them on their own in San Marino mansions while they returned to distant countries to run their businesses. I wrote an enthusiastic endorsement. Since then, there have been four more well-received novels and an anthology called Los Angeles Noir. So I didn’t open Hamilton’s new book, The Last Embrace,without expectations.
In it, Hamilton resuscitates one of the great, enduring fictional situations, the one in which a lone, mysterious stranger shows up in a small town and begins asking questions about a missing person. It’s the plot of Bad Day at Black Rock and of High Plains Drifter. Only in Hamilton’s rendition, both the stranger and the victim are beautiful young women, and the corrupt, cowardly little town is Hollywood.
It’s October 1949. After the long trip from Champaign, Illinois, Lily Kessler steps off a train at Union Station, looking like one of the legion of pretty, naive newcomers seeking an acting career. She’s actually something else, a woman who spent the war in Europe spying for the OSS, and she has the skills of an investigator, the persistence of a termite and a sacred trust to fulfill. The mother of her fiancé, an OSS officer killed in Europe, has asked her to find her only remaining child, an actress called Kitty Hayden, who left her boarding house one night and didn’t return.
Read the rest of Thomas Perry's review here:
http://www.laweekly.com/art+books/boo...
In 2001, an editor at Scribner sent me the manuscript of a first novel called TheJasmine Trade by a Los Angeles Times reporter named Denise Hamilton. It was an intriguing, contemporary story built around some Asian teenagers whose parents left them on their own in San Marino mansions while they returned to distant countries to run their businesses. I wrote an enthusiastic endorsement. Since then, there have been four more well-received novels and an anthology called Los Angeles Noir. So I didn’t open Hamilton’s new book, The Last Embrace,without expectations.
In it, Hamilton resuscitates one of the great, enduring fictional situations, the one in which a lone, mysterious stranger shows up in a small town and begins asking questions about a missing person. It’s the plot of Bad Day at Black Rock and of High Plains Drifter. Only in Hamilton’s rendition, both the stranger and the victim are beautiful young women, and the corrupt, cowardly little town is Hollywood.
It’s October 1949. After the long trip from Champaign, Illinois, Lily Kessler steps off a train at Union Station, looking like one of the legion of pretty, naive newcomers seeking an acting career. She’s actually something else, a woman who spent the war in Europe spying for the OSS, and she has the skills of an investigator, the persistence of a termite and a sacred trust to fulfill. The mother of her fiancé, an OSS officer killed in Europe, has asked her to find her only remaining child, an actress called Kitty Hayden, who left her boarding house one night and didn’t return.
Read the rest of Thomas Perry's review here:
http://www.laweekly.com/art+books/boo...
March 2, 2009
The back cover compares this author to many mystery writers, each with a very different style. After reading it, I understand why there were so many comparisons made. She has attempted to combine or emulate so many different writers that the mixture sits clumsily between the covers of the book. She is not Raymond Chandler. She is not Sue Grafton.
I had some problems with the main character too. I have read biographies and autobiographies of former OSS agents, and can't imagine any of them becoming anywhere near as helpless as the main character. She's a very contradictory element in the story. First the author tells us that something is a great strength of hers from the war, and then she finds herself in a situation where you would expect her to shine, and she falters or worse yet, becomes helpless and in distress. Very frustrating to read, and really quite disappointing.
Finally, it seems that the author pulled all of the most trendy elements of 1940s Los Angeles and put them ALL into this book. We've got starlets, the mob, dirty cops, spies, fog, the Black Dahlia, etc, etc. It's just too much to be believable. Overall, my impression is that this book is poor at best.
I had some problems with the main character too. I have read biographies and autobiographies of former OSS agents, and can't imagine any of them becoming anywhere near as helpless as the main character. She's a very contradictory element in the story. First the author tells us that something is a great strength of hers from the war, and then she finds herself in a situation where you would expect her to shine, and she falters or worse yet, becomes helpless and in distress. Very frustrating to read, and really quite disappointing.
Finally, it seems that the author pulled all of the most trendy elements of 1940s Los Angeles and put them ALL into this book. We've got starlets, the mob, dirty cops, spies, fog, the Black Dahlia, etc, etc. It's just too much to be believable. Overall, my impression is that this book is poor at best.
August 4, 2011
I had been reading this book just a few minutes at a time, in between reading other books. About 100 pages in I considered giving up as there were so many characters and I didn’t really love the story. But I read a few reviews from people saying what a page turner it was so I kept at it. Once I focused on just this book, it seemed to get better (or maybe I just preferred the last half to the first half). By the end of the book, I couldn’t put it down.
The Bad: The characters were a little flat. Lily herself was a bit boring when she wasn’t being chased by bad guys. The situations she got herself into weren’t always believable. Her relationship with Pico I didn't really get into. The choppiness and the way the characters were introduced at the beginning made it difficult to keep them all straight so I just gave up and stopped trying. Turns out it didn’t really matter, it all worked itself out.
The Good: The intrigue… trying to figure out who was good and who was bad kept me guessing until the end.
An interesting book, different from what I normally read. But I don’t think I’ll be searching out this author again.
The Bad: The characters were a little flat. Lily herself was a bit boring when she wasn’t being chased by bad guys. The situations she got herself into weren’t always believable. Her relationship with Pico I didn't really get into. The choppiness and the way the characters were introduced at the beginning made it difficult to keep them all straight so I just gave up and stopped trying. Turns out it didn’t really matter, it all worked itself out.
The Good: The intrigue… trying to figure out who was good and who was bad kept me guessing until the end.
An interesting book, different from what I normally read. But I don’t think I’ll be searching out this author again.
September 1, 2009
Page turner! Wonderful description of LA in the late 1940s. My favorite passage describing the main character, Lily Kessler:
You could never fully own a girl like that, he thought. Part of her would always remain a mystery, tantalizing, and out of reach. She'd want to be treated like one of the boys, and she'd match you drink for drink and swear like a stevedore and drive recklessly down empty highways late at night, just another one of the boys, until you took her to bed, and then she'd press against you and make little noises and you'd be glad she wasn't a boy, and clutch her tight, but in the morning she'd be gone.
You could never fully own a girl like that, he thought. Part of her would always remain a mystery, tantalizing, and out of reach. She'd want to be treated like one of the boys, and she'd match you drink for drink and swear like a stevedore and drive recklessly down empty highways late at night, just another one of the boys, until you took her to bed, and then she'd press against you and make little noises and you'd be glad she wasn't a boy, and clutch her tight, but in the morning she'd be gone.
April 7, 2013
I read the whole thing in less than a day. I never guessed whodunit either, which is rare for me. Thought it did start off a little slow, and was a little disappointed in the ending (or lack thereof), but overall was very good. Strong prose, the plot linked together nicely, and the period descriptions and name-dropping were fun and interesting.
August 28, 2008
I must say that I enjoyed this book even though I have never read any noir or much detective fiction. She has a great sense of period (this is set in Post WWII Hollywood) and the characters are engaging. It was a fast paced page turner.
January 7, 2022
I love Hamilton’s writing and this book doesn’t disappoint in leaving me guessing till the very end where it somehow all comes together in a very satisfying conclusion. I love that her female leads don’t need a man but the romance angle keeps things interesting. This book did feel a bit less streamlined than some of her other novels but I still very much enjoyed following along as the threads of the mystery slowly wove together to create a whole picture. As usual her descriptive writing style has left my thoughts more eloquent and my vocabulary expanded as I had to google new words often while I read, something I personally don’t mind though did often seem like the unnecessary highbrow word choice, which may be off putting to some.
May 9, 2019
3 1/2 star read. I've read all of her Eve Hamilton novels and this is a stand alone for Hamilton and it was not a bad little read. Lily Kessler is back from working in Europe with the OSS as a spy during WWII and returns to LA. Her late fiance's sister is missing and Lily is asked by the family to investigate. When Kitty's body is found below the Hollywood sign, Lily's investigation takes her to Hollywood studios and into the world of the Mob in LA. When other girls' bodies turn up, it seems that Lily could be the next victim. A noir novel, but with a heroine, not a hero, this was a pleasant enough read.
October 14, 2017
Reading a work of historical fiction is always a bit of a mixed bag. Although you may have all the details of landscape, clothes, etc. right, it's hard to know how people of a time not one's own could have spoken, could have felt. This murder mystery set against the backdrop of post-WW2 Los Angeles is stylish, but ultimately forgettable.
October 18, 2014
Post-war Los Angeles is ordinarily neither a time nor a place I'd care to find myself in, but Hamilton manages to draw the reader in by going beyond the clichéd portrayal of a seedily glamorous city rife with corruption.
Although Lily, the protagonist, seems astonishingly naive despite her background — OSS — it is her naiveté that provides a refreshingly balanced perspective of the city. A more jaded character would have had trouble seeing past the surface depravity to see the good in others.
The mystery is compelling, and we are drawn into the investigation even though we don't find our suspicions veering from one character to the next in an effort to find "whodunit."
Lily's OSS background and the skills she must have picked up could have been given greater play in her investigation of the brutal murder of a starlet who might have been her sister-in-law. And the detailed exposition to animation while Lily questions a suspect, while interesting, was unnecessary and seemed contrived.
But this was still an excellent read. And even readers more comfortable in either the distant past or the more secure world of the cozy will find much to enjoy in The Last Embrace.
Although Lily, the protagonist, seems astonishingly naive despite her background — OSS — it is her naiveté that provides a refreshingly balanced perspective of the city. A more jaded character would have had trouble seeing past the surface depravity to see the good in others.
The mystery is compelling, and we are drawn into the investigation even though we don't find our suspicions veering from one character to the next in an effort to find "whodunit."
Lily's OSS background and the skills she must have picked up could have been given greater play in her investigation of the brutal murder of a starlet who might have been her sister-in-law. And the detailed exposition to animation while Lily questions a suspect, while interesting, was unnecessary and seemed contrived.
But this was still an excellent read. And even readers more comfortable in either the distant past or the more secure world of the cozy will find much to enjoy in The Last Embrace.
September 24, 2015
Warning: This was written under the inluence of AMbien. I take no responsiblity for anything that atually makes sense of is spelled right. I will feel like I really acconplushed somethibg if it reads like someone interpreting sign languag for Koko the gorilla. That would be the best possible outcome.
This book good. I like book. I like that main character not dumbass, but actually cool chick. I like all that true crime and Black Dahlia stuffy wuffy, so this was a nice spin on it. In spite of it be murder mystery book thing, it's not very dark. Some characters be seedy, but for the most part in more of a mean kids who never grew up way ,and not in a "makes me start to wonder what my own neighbors keep in their basements" kind of seedy. Anyhooter, nice,fun, reading, and much more articulate nad not porrly spelled like this review.
I think I'm supposed to be ib bed now.
This book good. I like book. I like that main character not dumbass, but actually cool chick. I like all that true crime and Black Dahlia stuffy wuffy, so this was a nice spin on it. In spite of it be murder mystery book thing, it's not very dark. Some characters be seedy, but for the most part in more of a mean kids who never grew up way ,and not in a "makes me start to wonder what my own neighbors keep in their basements" kind of seedy. Anyhooter, nice,fun, reading, and much more articulate nad not porrly spelled like this review.
I think I'm supposed to be ib bed now.
October 1, 2008
Ever since coming across her first book, The Jasmine Trade, I have been a huge fan and collector of Hamilton's series of Eve Diamond books. I eagerly picked up this last one, a one-off, set in 1949, two weeks after I was born, and after struggling to stay awake for days while reading it, finally had to put it down, in great disappointment. The characters were flat and unbelievable, not to mention the action (what there was of it), and at times I felt like I was being lectured--sometimes in the characters' dialogue--on how bad times were for women back then. I KNOW they were bad, I just wanted a good fast read, something to hold my interest from beginning to end. Sadly, it didn't happen for me with this book . . .
November 25, 2008
This has all the fun elements of noir... LA in the 1940's, double-crossing dames, crooked cops. Only this time a female, former OSS agent is solving the crime.
My big complaint is that even though the author gets the noir setting she doesn't commit either way to the noir "voice." James Ellroy sets the bar pretty high for modern day noir writers and though I didn't go in expecting a female Ellroy I did expect a little more commitment. It's as if she can't decide if she wants to go there stylistically or not.
That aside, it's an entertaining read. The characters are interesting and the mystery kept me guessing. I'll chalk this up to the author getting her feet wet with the genre since she did so much right. I would read more from her.
My big complaint is that even though the author gets the noir setting she doesn't commit either way to the noir "voice." James Ellroy sets the bar pretty high for modern day noir writers and though I didn't go in expecting a female Ellroy I did expect a little more commitment. It's as if she can't decide if she wants to go there stylistically or not.
That aside, it's an entertaining read. The characters are interesting and the mystery kept me guessing. I'll chalk this up to the author getting her feet wet with the genre since she did so much right. I would read more from her.
August 27, 2008
I had never read Denise Hamilton before but after meeting her I definitely put this at the top of my stack of mysteries. The story is loosely based on the Jean Spangler missing persons case of 1949. The characters are interesting and the plot has several twists and turns that make it worth time. It is not a predictable read and does have that noir feel as you are reading it. A great summer/rainy day read.
June 8, 2009
This was a quick read. I was able to start and finish it on a long car trip.
It was interesting enough. I felt like there was a lot going on and sometimes it got kind of muddled to me. There wasn't too much of things happening without them telling you what it is (conversations without knowing who is speaking and the like) which I appreciated. The setting was interesting. Not knowing who to trust got annoying and I was sad for the people who die.
It was interesting enough. I felt like there was a lot going on and sometimes it got kind of muddled to me. There wasn't too much of things happening without them telling you what it is (conversations without knowing who is speaking and the like) which I appreciated. The setting was interesting. Not knowing who to trust got annoying and I was sad for the people who die.
July 6, 2009
A murder mystery (not gory)set in LA after World War II involving the movie studios and striving actors. Movies and actors aren't a big interest of mine and the plot seemed a bit choppy so I just rated this book as ok. If that time frame or setting are interesting to the reader, this would probably rate higher. The story did have a few well done twists.
January 25, 2010
So far, so good! I received this book as a christmas present from MIL and it's right up my alley. Old Hollywood mystery type stuff ala James Ellroy. Haven't been able to finish it yet but I can say that having never heard of this author or reading any of her books I have thoroughly enjoyed what I've read so far...
July 29, 2010
I started this book and about half way through it I lost interest. A few weeks later I now don't know if it was the book's fault or if it was the discovery of another book I wanted to read more. But either way, I am not in any hurry to find out who killed Lilly (if that is her name, I can't remember).
June 6, 2013
This was an interesting read that takes readers back in history to just after WWII. After her fiance dies as a result of the war, the book reveals the her fiance's sister has disappears. Heading to Los Angeles, the lead character investigates and follows leads to uncover what has happened. An very thought out plot that takes the reader back to the old Los Angeles days.
October 9, 2015
I got a slow start on this book but finally got back to it. This is great noir fiction taking place in the heyday of Hollywood. Young women flocked to Hollywood hoping to become famous and sad to say wound up dead. This book has starlets, the mob, the movie studios, the pre-runners of the paparazzi and corrupt cops. The author brings this time line to life with her descriptive prose,
July 15, 2009
Disappointing. Mildly entertaining.
At least twice in my copy, the main character Lily was called Kitty, who was the victim.
And in the end, the author makes a grammatical mistake in her why-I-wrote-this-book statement. So I couldn't finish that part.
I like her modern day series better.
At least twice in my copy, the main character Lily was called Kitty, who was the victim.
And in the end, the author makes a grammatical mistake in her why-I-wrote-this-book statement. So I couldn't finish that part.
I like her modern day series better.
October 4, 2009
A former OSS operative comes to LA in 1949 to find her dead fiance's missing sister. This book is chock full of atmosphere & Hollywood "glamor", as well as hard-boiled detectives, warring gang leaders, & starlets willing to do anything to further their careers.
October 3, 2011
The Last Embrace is post-war Los Angeles film noir in print. A well-plotted and written whodunit, interesting characters and mentions of places I know from growing up in the area made it a fun, indulgent read. My only criticism is that the romance scenes are a bit over-the-top.
March 25, 2014
This was my "California and Local History" class that I loved wrapped into a crime novel. Besides two irritating typos it was a very good story and well written. All my L.A. peeps would appreciate the vivid scenery. Check it out.
June 1, 2016
I enjoyed the thought of being so close to all the movie stars from the late 40's. I enjoyed a glimpse into everyday life in Hollywood and those that lived and worked arround the stars. The mystery was pleasantly portrayed and I loved that it was based on a true story.
September 2, 2008
First Denise Hamilton novel that I have read and just read my second one by the same author. Reminds me of Michael Connelly
December 15, 2008
This was a fun book to read and I will follow this author. This is post WWII in the 40's and is a great venture into LA in its early heyday. Graywyn will enjoy this!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews