Perhaps the best place in 1943 Hollywood to see the stars is the Hollywood Canteen, a club for servicemen staffed exclusively by those in show business. Murder mystery playwright Annie Laurence, new in town after a devastating breakup, definitely hopes to rub elbows with the right stars. Maybe then she can get her movie made. But Hollywood proves to be more than tinsel and glamour. When despised film critic Fiona Farris is found dead in the Canteen kitchen, Annie realizes any one of the Canteen’s luminous volunteers could be guilty of the crime. To catch the killer, Annie falls in with Fiona’s friends, a bitter and cynical group–each as uniquely unhappy in their life and career as Annie is in hers–that call themselves the Ambassador’s Club. Solving a murder in real life, it turns out, is a lot harder than writing one for the stage. And by involving herself in the secrets and lies of the Ambassador’s Club, Annie just might have put a target on her own back.
A polyamorous, bisexual murder mystery set in 1940s, pre-Singin’ in the Rain Hollywood?
Do I need to say more?
Here is my original draft for this review:
do you know how rare lgbt thriller mysteries are? do you????
Now − I’ve read a few queer crime novels recently, so clearly there’s more and more going on, between A Calculated Risk and Where the dead sleep.
Last night at the Hollywood canteen is less of a thriller, although it’s very far from a cozy mystery. It doesn’t focus on the crime quite this much, adding a depth of character which is rare for this kind of novel. Also, it’s nice to not have the narrator be a (former) cop: she’s just a normal crazy ex-girlfriend, moving across the country to spite her famous exes and possibly vaguely stalk them, making friends with absolutely vile socialites, and immediately getting accused of murder while abusing the pills that her employer gives her to make her more productive. Very normal and relatable stuff here.
This novel took me out of a reading slump and I’m very grateful for that. It is definitely one of the best thrillers I’ve read in the past years, and I recommend it to people who want to read more polyamorous fiction that’s not about being poly, more queer fiction, or more crime novels.