Customer Reviews

Savage Garden: A Novel (Eve Diamond Novels)

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Eve Diamond should be sipping a drink in her retro cocktail dress, boyfriend Silvio at her side and a night of cutting-edge theater stretched before her. But when the diva star of the play is a no-show, Eve and Silvio go to check on her as a favor to the director, who is Silvio's old friend.

By the end of the first chapter, it's clear that Eve isn't going to see the show. But the good news is that Eve, a seasoned LA Times reporter, has a big jump on her competition in what promises to be a huge breaking story.

Savage Garden is Hamilton's best-written of the four-book Eve Diamond series. It is filled with underlying themes of trust and honesty that support the plot and add depth and a certain edgy mood to the story. Are reporters making up quotes and fabricating sources? Are they stealing each other's ideas? Is Silvio being honest with Eve about his own relationship with the missing actress?

As usual, Hamilton nails the dynamics of an urban newsroom, with its hierarchies and posturing. Eve doesn't like having a new hot-shot reporter sitting at her desk, using her phone and listening in on her conversations. But she herself is not above stealing a story by pretending she couldn't stop her colleague in time to do it himself. Readers of previous Diamond mysteries are aware of Eve's insecurities and jealousies and ambition, and this book takes all these traits up a notch.

Hamilton uses the city of Los Angeles as a perfect setting for her vibrant story lines. She sets scenes in fantastic ethnic restaurants, poverty-filled neighborhoods, dense forests, rugged oceanside cliffs. The action pops off the pages, and the writing shows great style.

Savage Garden is a terrific mystery, a must-read with a strong woman lead character and a lot of suspense.

Hamilton jams her plot's pedal to the metal on page one, and never lets up. Savage Garden flat out smokes. Careening across the vast expanse of Los Angeles County, from the barrios to Malibu, Echo Park to the Pacific Coast Highway, Savage Garden unflinchingly targets those souls who view LA as a giant stage for their own star turns, only to so often find the tank empty. Like their city, Hamilton's characters are constantly shifting, changing, and little is as it seems. And motion, relentless motion. It's Chinatown with a latin beat and modern style. It's Chandler for the here and now. Hamilton's taut prose and exquisitely etched characters are the perfect vehicles for advancing her plot and ratcheting up the suspense. Savage Garden is the finest all-around effort to date from a significant new voice in crime fiction.

The sassy, brazen journalist Eve Diamond is back in yet another sensational thriller from Denise Hamilton. Again using the sun drenched streets of Los Angeles as her backdrop, Hamilton drops her heroine into the thick of murder, obsession, jealousy, and all-consuming passion in a story that has all the epic qualities of a Greek tragedy.

In Savage Garden, the action - and there's plenty of it - takes place throughout this vast, diverse city: from the inner city suburb of Echo Park and the barrios of East L.A. to the exclusivity of Malibu, and the serenity of the Angeles National Forest, Hamilton incorporates her trademark knack for relentless and unyielding suspense.

Employing a terse, tense first person narrative, Savage Garden, homes in on local stage diva, Catarina Velosi. Catarina has inexplicably gone missing just before her debut performance in the new play Our Lady of the Barrio. Alfonso Reventon, who wrote the play for her is concerned, so Silvio, his best friend, offers to go to her apartment to check on her. Of course, the ever- curious Eve decides to tag along, in the hope of a good story.

Catarina's apartment is empty, but the couple discovers bloodstains on the pillow of her bed and also on the open window. It's a disturbing scene and Eve immediately expects that the disappearance involves foul play. When Catarina's body is later found, the case becomes personal for Eve, for the police believe Silvio knows something because of his past relationship with the victim. Eve begins to wonder what secrets Silvio had with both Catarina and Alfonso; the life he had before he met Eve.

Eve soon discovers, with the help of her arch nemesis, the smart, and very ambitious African-American reporter Felice Morgan, that there were a number of people who were quite upset with Catarina: There's Marisela, Alfonso's neurotic wife, who changes like quicksilver from pathetic drunk to wronged wife to vulnerable little girl. She's a troubled, unhappy woman, who seems to be behaving like the real actress, moving fluidly and lithely among many different roles.

Suspicion also falls on Alfonso, for it is soon revealed that he has been having a passionate affair with Catarina. Alfonso, who has used his barrio roots as a badge of authenticity for his plays - gaining fame and fortune on the backs of the lives he has exploited - saw Catarina's unmistakable talent, eventually offering her, her big break. And what of Catarina's drama coach Victoria Givens? Victoria steadily used the make-believe of theater to seduce wayward teens from their grim realities while she basked in the glories of her star pupil.

Escaping childhood horrors through the stage, Catarina revisited the barrio each night tearing her heart open for adoring fans while keeping her real life hidden. She was a tortured, hard-bitten soul, and Eve, while fanatically trying to put together the patchwork quilt of her life, discovers secrets and lies that have long been buried.

But Eve must also contend with the duplicitous nature of Felice who has a tendency to make things up. Can Eve trust Felice not to steal her stories? If she trusts Felice and ends up wrong about the younger reporter's authenticity, she could also get herself killed. Eve, however, knows one thing for sure, Felice is an enigmatic reporter from the wrong side of the tracks and she's trying effortlessly to shrug off her own skin and slip into a newer more glamorous one.

Savage Garden is also about the somewhat hard-won journey of LA's disenfranchised Latino community. The Latino characters in this novel have tried desperately to pull themselves out of poverty, and the barrio dangers of crime, drugs, gangs and violence. It's just so unfortunate that Catarina and Alfonso have risen to the level of superstars, only to be torn apart in the end by the dark secrets of their past.

Hamilton writes with a confident rigor, portraying an LA that inexplicably turns everyone into actors, pining for the role that they just can't have. It's a city where beauty is always more exquisite when backlit by horror, and where the sublime is entwined with the profane. Betrayal, blood, murder, the corruption of money, and also the inevitability of fate are at the heart of this exciting, exhilarating, and bracing murder mystery. Mike Leonard July 05.

Opening night for the play Our Lady Of The Barrio is not going as planned. The lead actress, Catarina Velosi is a no-show for the performance and Alfonso Reventon, who wrote the play for Catarina, is concerned about her. When Reventon requests that his friend, Silvio Aguilar go to Catarina's apartment to check on her, Eve Diamond tags along.

After arriving at Catarina's apartment and taking in the disturbing scene, Eve believes that the actress's disappearance involves foul play. When Catarina's body is later found, the case becomes personal for Eve. The police believe Silvio, her boyfriend, is good for the murder because of his past relationship with the victim. But Eve learns that there are a multitude of characters that hated the actress enough to snuff out her life. It is then that Eve summons her skills as a journalist to ferret out exactly what happened.

Eve's quest to solve the murder is complicated by a young reporter, Felice Morgan, who may be falsifying stories and whom insinuates herself in Eve's case. Eve doesn't particularly like Felice and definitely doesn't want a partner.

Savage Garden is Denise Hamilton's fourth Eve Diamond adventure. It is a hard-boiled mystery that is well-written and possesses a compelling, suspenseful and edgy plot. The characters are well-drawn and the fast-paced writing makes it difficult to put down. I'm looking forward to the next Eve Diamond adventure.

Savage Garden has our intrepid investigative reporter, Eve Diamond, in the middle of a scandal involving her lover, Silvio. Eve investigates the murder of an actress who is a friend and former lover of Silvio--partly to alleviate suspicion against him. She braves threats and danger to absolve Silvio, even while she is undermined by her own doubts about his truthfulness. Meanwhile, She also has to train an ambitious rookie who may be stealing her leads. Eve precariously manages to juggle her career, her love-life and the murder investigation.

Eve is a gutsy heroine who struggles to maintain a high-profile reporter job in the cut-throat world of big city journalism. This makes having a private life pretty difficult. The stories are set against the backdrop of downtown Los Angeles and its artsy multi-ethnic communities. My only quibble with this story is that Eve doesn't seem to have much fun--I'd like to see her play in between all the hard work she does!

Everyone who loved LAST LULLABY, SUGAR SKULL and THE JASMINE TRADE needs to rush out and read SAVAGE GARDEN. Denise Hamilton has lost none of the edge she exhibited in those books. If anything, she's a smarter, more accomplished writer now.

The opening passages of SAVAGE GARDEN put one in mind of the very best of Michael Connelly. The writing here is lyrical and lovely and, most importantly, it evokes the mean streets of Los Angeles that Hamilton writes so well.

In her fourth novel, Hamilton tells the story of a gifted and driven playright and his old love, who is also the lead actress in his newest play. When the actress goes missing on opening night, the police aren't even convinced foul play has been involved. Though Eve not only suspects foul play, she's afraid her own lover might have something to do with it.

Great read. It took me back to the heart of Los Angeles where I used to live. Interesting and diverse characters, lots of action and a fast pace make this a book you won't want to put down. Oh, and a short, but smoking, love scene in a .... but I don't want to give away any details.

Over her first three books, the gifted Denise Hamilton earned a reputation as one of the brightest new stars in the mystery world. Her series featuring L.A. Times reporter Eve Diamond has featured some of the best writing the genre has seen.

Her latest, "Savage Garden," continues that trend. The plot is another rich one for Hamilton, this time featuring Eve participating in the hunt for an actress missing on the eve of her triumphant return to the stage.

In her pursuit of the story, Eve is paired with an upstart reporter recently hired as part of the newspaper's affirmative action program. Eve is wary of the aggressive rookie's motives and ethics, especially when she steals a scoop out from under Eve.

With its combination of sharp characters, crisp prose and hot-button topics such as race and journalistic ethics, "Savage Garden" rises above the level of an ordinary detective novel to become a vibrant, powerful and relevant story.

In Los Angeles the opening day curtain call is in one hour for the play Our Lady of the Barrio by gangbanger Alfonso Reventon; however the leading lady, explosive actress Catarina Velosi has not shown up at the playhouse. Since Alfonso is a childhood friend, Silvio Aguilar asks his girlfriend Los Angeles Times reporter Eve Diamond to accompany him to Catarina's apartment where they find her dead.

The police wonder if Alfonso who worshipped Catarina and wrote his play for her killed her in a passionate rage or Silvio whose entrance to the crime scene with a perfect witness might have covered up evidence that he was previously there. Eve, accompanied by African-American reporter Felice Morgan, conducts inquiries into those who knew the volatile diva to determine who had the opportunity because several people besides the two prime suspects which include Alfonso's wife, the victim's drama teacher, and a Hollywood big shot, along with a seemingly cast of thousands had motives.

The latest Eve Diamond investigation is refreshed by Felice who brings a youthful (annoying to Eve) vigor to the case even as the veteran reporter wonders if her "protégé" is a racial quota Blair clone or the real thing; either way she does not want a partner. The who-done-it cleverly makes Eve seems more real than her previous appearances because of her resentment of having a tag-along and how personalized this homicide is with the ties to her boyfriend. Though the racial quota vs. talent issue is never fully explored, fans of Southern California artsy mysteries will agree that Denise Hamilton has scored with this Ace of Diamonds journalistic investigative novel.

Harriet Klausner