REVIEWED BY WALTER ALBERT:         


DENISE HAMILTON – The Last Embrace. Scribner, hardcover/trade paperback, June 2008.

DENISE HAMILTON

   Lily Kessler worked undercover for the OSS during WWII, along with her lover, Joseph Croggan, who was killed in a freak accident after the war.

   When during a visit to Joseph’s mother, Mrs. Croggan receives a wire that her daughter, a young actress working in Hollywood, has disappeared, Lily reluctantly agrees to try to find out what has happened to her, and finds herself returning to the city where she grew up and to which she had never intended to return.

   Lily moves into the room that Kitty had rented in a boarding house for girls seeking, like her, to break into the movie industry, Then, after the discovery of Kitty’s body in a ravine, Lily begins her own investigation when it seems the police aren’t making much headway in theirs.

   The Los Angeles that Kitty knew, and that Lily rediscovers, is a competitive jungle, with temptations for the Unwary that, in addition to the traditional producer’s couch, include gangsters and other pitfalls for the vulnerable young women who flock to the area. One of Kitty’s friends, and a possible suspect for her death, is Max Vranizan, one of the more interesting characters, who works with Willis O’Brien on special effects, but whose creative talent has a dark side.

DENISE HAMILTON

   Lily seems to find a soulmate in an LA homicide detective, but his partner seems untrustworthy, a quality that soon makes Lily wary of her friend, Pico, in a world in which she finds herself increasingly alone, as well as the target of violence that puts her life in jeopardy.

   This is a Hollywood noir, with a definite feminine take on its conventions, and Lily is another of those inquisitive female heroines who get themselves into situations where caution seems to be in very short supply.

   There’s a fair amount of supplementary material that convinces me that Hamilton did her homework and that she has a genuine affection for post-war Hollywood, with a feel for the geography that seems genuine.

   I wish I had liked the novel more, but in spite of the threatening situations in which Lily finds herself, there was too much of a romantic haze to make me feel that she was ever in any real danger. The threats were less real than Lily’s need to recover from her past and move on with her life, which she finally does, in true romance novel fashion.