Denise Hamilton, Sugar Skull

Sugar Skull

Denise Hamilton

Pocket, Feb 2004, $6.99, 374 pp.

ISBN: 0743482212

Los Angeles Times reporter is working on the weekend homicide count when a flustered angry man races into the newsroom accusing the cops of indifference towards the disappearance of his daughter. To calm the father Vincent down, reporter Eve Diamond agrees to make inquiries into the vanishing of Isabel Chevalier.

However, as Eve starts looking into the disappearance and finishing her cataloguing the thirty plus known murders, the killing murder of socialite Dellaviglia Langdon sends shockwaves throughout the city. Dellaviglia's spouse Carter is running for mayor and his wife's body floating in her pool provide him a tremendous lift towards winning the race. Overnight he has become the overwhelming favorite as everyone sympathizes with the grieving politician. That is everyone except Eve who via a pair of Speedo sees links to the promise she made to the distraught father and to another dead person that leads to corruption at the highest level of the city and could change the dynamics of the mayoral race.

This is an engaging investigative tale that displays how a high profile case can overwhelm anything else on the plate. The store line is very invigorating as Eve paints a vivid but somewhat ugly picture of the mean streets of Los Angeles that interconnect. Eve makes the tale work as she tries to clean up her home city even when her bosses, the police, and the mayor demand she back off.

Harriet Klausner