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Table of Contents
About The Book
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.
Product Details
- Publisher: Scribner (March 25, 2003)
- Length: 304 pages
- ISBN13: 9780743254144
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Raves and Reviews
Denver Rocky Mountain News Thrilling.
Publishers Weekly Passionate.
Phoenix New Times Suspenseful.
Los Angeles Times Exhilarating...so absorbing you don't want to stop reading.
Denver Post Denise Hamilton and Eve Diamond are the real deal.
Kirkus Reviews Hamilton shows that she's every bit as ambitious in tackling big-city corruption as Sara Paretsky...few readers will be able to resist her V.I. Warshawski with a tape recorder and a California tan.
Publishers Weekly [A] passionate new puzzle
Library Journal (starred review) Journalist Hamilton...has expertly crafted a tale of lust, greed, murder, and an appetite for power that transcends the deepest of racial, cultural, and class divides in the City of Angels.
Los Angeles Times Book Review So absorbing that you don't want to stop reading.
The Boston Globe Captures beautifully the go-here, go-there life of a suburban reporter on a big-city daily...Sugar Skull is a pleasing journey with a character who...feels remarkably real.
Resources and Downloads
High Resolution Images
- Book Cover Image (jpg): Sugar Skull eBook 9780743254144(1.6 MB)
- Author Photo (jpg): Denise Hamilton Photo Credit:(0.1 MB)
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