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Denise Hamilton Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Author Biography  | Interview  | Books by this Author  | Read-Alikes

Denise Hamilton
© Blake Little

Denise Hamilton

Denise Hamilton Biography

Denise Hamilton is an American crime novelist, journalist and editor of the Edgar-award winning anthologies Los Angeles Noir and Los Angeles Noir 2: The Classics. Hamiltons five Eve Diamond crime novels have been short-listed for many awards, including the Edgar Award in mystery, Willa Cather award in literary fiction and the UK's Creasey Dagger Award.

Her debut The Jasmine Trade was also a finalist for the prestigious Creasey Dagger Award given by the UK Crime Writers Assn. Hamilton's books have been BookSense 76 picks and Mystery Guild alternate selections, and have been published in France, Japan and England.

As a journalist, Hamilton's work has appeared in Wired, Cosmopolitan, Der Spiegel and New Times. She has won first place awards from the Los Angeles Press Club for feature and business writing.

She lives in a Los Angeles suburb with her husband and two young children.

Denise Hamilton's website

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Interview

Denise Hamilton discusses the first two books in her mystery/crime series, both set in Los Angeles - The Jasmine Trade and Sugar Skull.

As a cub reporter for the Los Angeles Times, I often worked weekends. And on summer days when the mercury climbed into the triple digits, one thing was sure: There would be a lot of murders.

People shot and stabbed and strangled each other in sleazy bars and hillside mansions, strip malls, abandoned houses and parking lots. Often, there were so many dead bodies clogging the news wires that the Times could barely mention them all.

Unless they were rich or famous or had died in a particularly gruesome fashion – such as the toddlers killed in a spray of drive-by bullets meant for someone else - the deceased didn’t merit their own stories. There were just too many murders and not enough room, and so most of them got folded as smoothly as egg whites into cake into what we called the "murder round-up" that ran every Monday morning.

Usually, that meant calling the police and coroner and getting only the most basic details – age, occupation, residence, cause of death. Still, when you had 40 murders in one weekend, that was one long litany of death.

I often wondered what exactly catapulted victims across the threshold of celebrity or gruesomeness into meriting their own story and how harried city ...

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Books by this Author

Books by Denise Hamilton at BookBrowse
Damage Control jacket Prisoner of Memory jacket Sugar Skull jacket The Jasmine Trade jacket
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Read-Alikes

All the books below are recommended as read-alikes for Denise Hamilton but some maybe more relevant to you than others depending on which books by the author you have read and enjoyed. So look for the suggested read-alikes by title linked on the right.
How we choose read-alikes

  • Michael Connelly

    Michael Connelly

    Michael Connelly decided to become a writer after discovering the books of Raymond Chandler while attending the University of Florida. Once he decided on this direction he chose a major in journalism and a minor in creative ... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    The Jasmine Trade

    Try:
    The Narrows
    by Michael Connelly

  • Jonathan Kellerman

    Jonathan Kellerman

    Jonathan Kellerman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than forty crime novels, including the Alex Delaware series, The Butcher's Theater, Billy Straight, The Conspiracy Club, Twisted, True Detectives, and The... (more)

    If you enjoyed:
    Sugar Skull

    Try:
    The Murder Book
    by Jonathan Kellerman

We recommend 5 similar authors

View all 5 Read-Alikes

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