Sugar Skull: An Eve Diamond Novel [Hardcover]

Denise Hamilton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 4, 2003

From the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, and Willa-nominated author Denise Hamilton comes SUGAR SKULL

Acclaimed by award committees and critics for her groundbreaking The Jasmine Trade, Denise Hamilton returns with a penetrating new Eve Diamond crime novel sure to confirm her reputation as a rising star.

Los Angeles Times reporter Eve Diamond usually works out of the paper's San Gabriel Valley bureau, but she's taking a weekend shift downtown when a distraught Vincent Chevalier breaks through security and demands her help.

His fifteen-year-old daughter, Isabel, is missing, and the cops won't go looking for her until forty-eight hours have passed. The man thinks he knows where she might be -- with some runaways in a dismal squat in East Hollywood. He wants Eve as his witness when he enters the squat and tries to bring Isabel home.

Eve senses a possible story: Why would a privileged young girl from Pasadena spend time with the down-and-outs in East Hollywood? But there will be no interview with Isabel. Isabel is dead, her body wrapped in a dirty futon and abandoned in a derelict basement.

Eve's questions have only begun. What brought the blond-haired teenager to such a tragic, early demise? Did a man named Finch, who's had past arrests for drugs, burglary, and theft, have something to do with Isabel's murder? What about her father? There's something unsettling about him. And what was Isabel's relationship with Paolo Langdon, her schoolmate and the son of a socialite hostess and a prominent politician?

Even as Eve must fight against powerful forces that want her off the story, she finds herself emotionally drawn to the brooding scion of a Mexican music-promotion titan. It's dangerous to mix professional with personal, but Silvio Aguilar is hard to resist. And in his world, in the little sugar skull confections that commemorate the Mexican Day of the Dead, Eve may find some clue to a killer.

Written with the authenticity and bold strokes that Denise Hamilton has made her own, Sugar Skull is much more than a triumphant crime novel -- it's a dazzling portrait of a city full of diversity. Rich with nuance and insight, this is compelling, illuminating crime writing at its best.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

You can spot Denise Hamilton's journalistic background in the inquisitive, meticulous way she plumbs the economic and ethnic strata of Los Angeles, the setting of her second Eve Diamond mystery, Sugar Skull. As in her previous book, The Jasmine Trade, which dealt with Asian gangsters and undersupervised teens susceptible to criminal influence, Sugar Skull contrasts seemingly disparate, yet intersecting social realms as it illuminates a metropolis in transition.

"All over town, people were dying violently," observes L.A. Times reporter Diamond at this tale's start. In other words, it's a typical weekend in California's largest city, with most of the deceased barely earning a mention in print. But Isabel Chevalier is different. A 15-year-old prep-school student, she's taken to slumming with runaway street kids, so when she disappears suddenly, her worried father seeks Diamond's help. Too late: Isabel is found murdered in an abandoned building. Sniffing a good story, Diamond tracks down the homeless youths who knew Isabel best, including the feral but oddly magnetic Finch "Mad Dog" Marino and an abused girl called Scout, who revs up the reporter's maternal instincts. At the same time, Diamond has another scoop on the hook, involving the suspicious demise of a mayoral candidate's "super-socialite" wife, who--in hypocritical disregard of her hubby's "family values" platform--has been cavorting with another man. Hamilton's smoothly paced yarn sends Eve from a riverside transvestite camp to Latino nightclubs to the hyper-competitive arena of her newsroom, yet leaves her time (and breath) enough to tryst with a somber Hispanic music promoter amid L.A.'s Day of the Dead festivities. Although readers may cringe at this novel's trite portrayals of spin-mad politicians, Diamond's rough-cut charm and perspicacity, plus Hamilton's thoughtful focus on race and homelessness, make Sugar Skull a sweet read. --J. Kingston Pierce

From Publishers Weekly

In Edgar finalist Hamilton's (The Jasmine Trade) passionate new puzzle, feisty Los Angeles Times reporter Eve Diamond is anxious to advance from the Valley to a more prestigious desk downtown. She gets her chance when, while writing the roundup of weekend murders, she's confronted by a man frantic to find his runaway daughter. Then the nude body of beautiful socialite Venus Della Viglia Langdon, wife of mayoral candidate Carter Langdon III, turns up in the couple's pool. These two seemingly unconnected occurrences reverberate across the vast urban sprawl that is home to one of the country's most diverse populations. The Mexican Day of the Dead festivities are in progress, and the little sugar skulls given to mark the occasion appear in the strangest places. Eve is soon immersed in the down and dirty worlds of runaways, a high-powered political campaign and the exploding Latin music scene-and caught up in a torrid affair with Silvio Aguilar, son of a music-industry tycoon and Venus's brother. The tenacious Eve discovers that even the most twisted and distant paths can converge, that very little separates the privileged from the desperate and that it's all-too-easy to step over the line of journalistic ethics, become part of the story and maybe wind up dead.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (March 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743245393
• ISBN-13: 978-0743245395
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,772,159 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Denise Hamilton writes crime novels and is editor of Los Angeles Noir, an anthology of new writing that spent two months on bestseller lists, won the Edgar Award for "Best Short Story" and the Southern California Independent Booksellers' award for "Best Mystery of the Year."

Denise also edited Los Angeles Noir 2: The Classics, with stories by Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Walter Mosley, James Ellroy, Chester Himes, Ross Macdonald, Margaret Millar and others.

Denise's new novel, Damage Control, will be published by Scribner on September 6, 2011 and has already received raves from Kirkus (In a novel that marries celebrity culture, surf noir and the bonds of friendship, Hamilton is at the top of her game) and James Ellroy (A superb psychological thriller). She has five books in the Eve Diamond series and her standalone book "The Last Embrace," set in 1949 Hollywood, was compared to Raymond Chandler.

Denise's books have been shortlisted for the Edgar, Macavity, Anthony and Willa Cather awards. Her debut "The Jasmine Trade" was a finalist for the prestigious Creasey Dagger Award given by the UK Crime Writers Assn. Hamilton's books have been BookSense 76 picks, USA Today Summer Picks and "Best Books of the Year" by the Los Angeles Times, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and the Toronto Globe & Mail.

Prior to writing novels, Hamilton was a Los Angeles Times staff writer. Her award-winning stories have also appeared in Wired, Cosmopolitan, Der Spiegel and New Times. She covered the collapse of Communism and was a Fulbright Scholar in Yugoslavia during the Bosnian War. Hamilton lives in the Los Angeles suburbs with her husband and two boys.

She also writes a perfume column for the Los Angeles Times

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sweet, February 21, 2004

By 

paul mason "dedarkone" (Barrie On) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sugar Skull: An Eve Diamond Novel (Eve Diamond Novels) (Mass Market Paperback)

Eve Diamond is a reporter for the L.A. Times whose morning starts hectically when a father bursts into her offices trying to enlist help to find his missing daughter. His daughter experimented with squating, and in fact admired the squatting youth of L.A. so much she dated one, who was prime suspect in her murder. The same weekend Venus (won't try to spell part of name) Langdon was found floating in her swimming pool. And a pool cleaner was killed in an apparant drive by shooting.
Three aparantly unconnected homicides, yet Eve is determined to find the truth in all three.
Hamilton's style is amazing, having worked as a reporter she sure knows her subject, and there is a definite passion in her story-telling. This novel is much like Ms. Eve Diamond, compassionate, sardonic and witty. The pacing is amazing and Hamilton writes the L.A. youth with remarkable skill.
Overall an excellent second entry into the Eve Diamond Mythos.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Still promising!, June 22, 2006

By 

Snowbrocade (Santa Barbara, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Sugar Skull: An Eve Diamond Novel (Eve Diamond Novels) (Mass Market Paperback)

The Eve Diamond series follows the exploits of an investigative reporter in Los Angeles. Eve lives in the artist commmunity of Los Feliz near downtown and specializes in stories that take her into ethnic communities. She also has a rapport with teens. This particular novel has Eve investigating homeless teens in Hollywood along with the music of the Mexican-American community.

Eve is a passionate truth seeker who has little private life and walks the edge of trouble. Her nose for a story leads her into difficult situations which she manages to maneuver to her advantage.

This series of novels still is in the promising stage. The stories are interesting but borders on a recital of the tale. Eve has just a little flatness in her character development that keeps me from bonding with her as much as I would like. On the other hand, I like the basics of the story--an independent, intelligent woman with a strong adventurer streak!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Why was a teenager killed in an abandoned building, October 1, 2004

By 

Dawn Dowdle "Mystery Lovers Corner reviewer" (Lynchburg, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sugar Skull: An Eve Diamond Novel (Eve Diamond Novels) (Mass Market Paperback)

Eve Diamond is an L. A. Times reporter. One Sat. she is in the downtown office taking her rotation. In comes Vincent Chevalier frantically asking for her help to find his fifteen-year-old daughter Isabel. After doing some checks to make sure he is legit, she goes with him. He takes her to an abandoned building that he says his daughter comes to because her boyfriend, Finch, who is a squatter, lives there. Unfortunately they find her dead.

The police arrest Finch, but after talking to some of Isabel's friends, she isn't so sure he did it. They tell her about Scout, another squatter who lived in the building. When she finds her, she ends up taking Scout home with her and tries to help her as well as get information from her. Seems Scout not only stole from Eve, she left something behind.

Venus Dellaviglia Langdon is found dead in her pool. Her husband Carter Langdon, III, was running for mayor. Eve had recently spoke to their son as he was a friend of Isabel's. So Eve went out to their house to try to get more information on her death. She sneaks around the press line but gets caught. But before she is, she sees something that later everyone denies.

Ruben Aguilar is gunned down in front of his home. Eve ends up meeting with his brother Silvio doing a story about an amphitheater they run for Mexican music. He takes her to hear some bands. Eventually their relationship becomes more than friends. Is this a good thing?

As Even delves deeper into Isabel's life and those around her, she begins to find how things are connected. Can she put it all together without putting herself in danger?

This was the first book I've read by this author. I found it to be interesting and entertaining. I like Eve. She is a warm, hard-working character. It made her seem believable and real.

The story line is well written and the author definitely knows the newspaper trade as well as L.A. She has a real sense of the places she puts her characters.

I recommend this book.