British widow Emma Blackstone has found herself in Hollywood as a companion to her sister-in-law Kitty Flint aka Camille de la Rose. Kitty is a movie actress and Emma makes herself useful caring for Kitty's three Pekinese, balancing her checkbook, and writing some of the scripts for Kitty's movies.

While living in Hollywood in 1924 wasn't what the scholarly young woman from Oxford had in her future plans, the deaths of her husband in World War I and her brother in England of grave wounds he suffered during the war, and the loss of her parents in the flu epidemic along with her own case of the flu changed all of her plans.

After a horrible stint as a companion for a woman in England, being swept off to Hollywood by Kitty was a welcome change. She enjoys riding herd on her free-spirited sister-in-law and helping to hide all of her romantic relationships from the press and her powerful lovers. She has even developed a friendship of her own with cameraman Zal Rokatansky. But things get complex in a hurry when Kitty's maybe-ex husband Rex Festraw is found shot to death in Kitty's dressing room.

The studio wants this covered up. They don't want to lose their star to a prison sentence, but Kitty isn't saying where she was during the crucial time period when Rex was shot. Emma wants to figure out who killed Rex and who is trying to frame Kitty for the crime. With the help of Zal and a mobster imported from New York, Emma is on the case despite being run off the road and shot at.

This was an excellent historical mystery set in a very glamorous time period and setting. I liked that Emma could see the underbelly of the world she was living in. I liked that she was smart and a nice person. I liked the conflict she was facing about whether to stay in Hollywood or accept her aunt's invitation to return to Oxford and the life she left behind. ( )

Camille de la Rose, screen name of Kitty Flint, is the Hollywood “It” girl (a term just come into vogue) of 1924. She couldn’t act her way out of a wet paper bag, or so thinks her sister-in-law and personal assistant, Emma Blackstone. But that hardly matters. Wherever Kitty goes, whatever she does, her style’s inimitable, and she’s good box office, of course, both on and off the screen.

A single glance can render the sexiest men in Hollywood putty in her hands. Burning the candle at both ends, she arrives on set made up to kill, after four hours’ sleep and much alcohol — who cares about Prohibition, anyway? Trouble is, she doesn’t know when to stop, even after snagging the studio head as her lover and a half-dozen other fellows, more than one of whom might suffer from jealousy.

However, Kitty does get down to work, shooting Empress of Babylon, a cast-of-thousands extravaganza, an improbable drama, yet a fine vehicle for her skills. Unfortunately, a man who married her when she was fifteen is found shot dead in her dressing room, carrying a note from her in his pocket.

Emma — remember the sister-in-law? — believes Kitty, who swears she hasn’t seen her ex in years, though it’s just possible he’s technically not her ex, since the divorce may not have been filed. (That lapse might cause problems, considering that Kitty married someone else afterward, though he’s long gone by now.) Nevertheless, Kitty has no convincing explanation for her whereabouts at the time the murder took place, and though it’s ridiculous to accuse her on the face of it, just what she was up to provides yet another mystery.

The police, gossip columnists, and evangelicals looking to sanitize Hollywood seldom agree on anything, but they’d all love to see a star brought low, whether to nurse their resentment or advance their careers. Kitty looks trapped. Even so, a circumstance sticks out. Since the killing appears a clumsy job, almost amateurish — surely, the accusation against her couldn’t stand up in court —Emma suspects that the criminal wishes above all to embarrass Kitty, and that the amateurishness serves a purpose. But what goal could it have? And who would go to all that trouble, and why?

Scandal in Babylon makes a delightful, well-plotted mystery, with enough unexpected edges to keep you turning the pages. Chief among these is sleuth Emma, a widow because of the Great War and an intellectual among the studio Philistines. English to the teeth — several male characters call her “Duchess” — she read classics at Oxford, has a Latin quote for every occasion, and loved participating in digs with her late father, an archaeologist.

When she’s not tending Kitty’s three Pekinese or cleaning up after the star’s messes (physical or diplomatic), she’s charming thugs who might have information about the murder, rewriting scenes a day ahead of filming, and bemoaning the anachronisms the studio inflicts on history. No, she sighs to herself, imperial Roman statuary could not have appeared in ancient Babylon.

This is all great fun, as is the portrayal of the California version of Babylon, with its gangsters, private detectives, studio fixers determined to keep their employer’s reputation clean at any cost, extras, seducers and seductresses, and, at its pinnacle, the star.
I’d have liked to know more about Madge, the leather-lunged director of this celluloid epic. It’s clear she’s got a story, as a woman in what was then a man’s job. I also find Zal, wizard cameraman and Emma’s love interest, too good to be true. Unlike just about every other male in Hollywood, he’s warm, open, kind, sensitive, and not even a blood corpuscle’s worth jealous or territorial. But the other characters work well enough, and the novel rests chiefly on the atmosphere, often hilarious, and the well-tuned story, in which Hambly keeps raising the stakes.

Scandal in Babylon is a hoot and a well-crafted mystery. ( )

Using all the same research and very similar characters as in Bride of the Rat God (one of my favourite books!), but none of the supernatural elements, Hambly has produced a fun mystery of silent film-era Hollywood. Englishwoman Emma Blackstone was married and widowed during WW1, and then lost her parents and home. Rescued from paid companionship to a dreadful woman by her ditzy actress sister-in-law, Camille de la Rose, she comes to Hollywood as said sister-in-law's assistant and dog-minder. There, she begins to find her feet again, taking on script-doctoring and making friends. When Camille's first ex-husband is murdered and Camille framed for it, Emma and friends step up to solve the mystery. Really enjoyed this. ( )

1924 Widow Emma Blackstone is working for her sister-in-laws, actress Kitty Flint aka Camille de la Rose in Hollywood. When the man Kitty married at 15 arrives on set. But not for long as he is found shot. Emma decides to investigate, and continually show off her intelligence.
A cozy historical mystery
The story was not really for me, as I found the characters unlikeable and not a style of writing I enjoyed reading.
An ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. ( )