As a hard-boiled Hollywood PI enlists Al Capone's help to save the Marx Brothers, Kaminsky 'makes the totally wacky possible' (The Washington Post).
It's 1941 and the Marx Brothers' first movie for MGM, Go West, has the country in stitches. But now Chico Marx is worried he's going to need stitches when he receives a severed ear in the mail-a simple message from a Chicago bookie who wants $120,000, or else. Chico is baffled because, although he loves to gamble, he's never made a bet in Chicago. Desperate, he turns to the king of Hollywood, Louis B. Mayer, who puts in a call to Toby Peters.
A Hollywood private detective who's proven himself adept at keeping scandals out of the tabloids, Peters flies to Florida for an interview with Al Capone, deposed lord of the Chicago underworld. The retired bootlegger's mind has gone soft, and he doesn't know anything about Chico's bookie, but he suggests Peters speak to his brother. With Scarface's good word as an introduction, the PI heads to Chicago. But it will take more than a good sense of humor to keep Groucho, Harpo, and especially Chico from getting axed.
Three years ago Lew Fonseca quit his job as a process server with the State Attorney's Office in Cook County, Illinois, and drove his rattling Toyota south to escape the memories of his beloved late wife. Headed for Key West, the Toyota broke down in a Dairy Queen parking lot in Sarasota, Florida. Buoyed by the friendship of a few trustworthy souls, Lew settled there, making ends meet by doing some investigative work for local attorneys.
Now, Lew is hired by Carl Sebastian, one of Lew's lawyer's clients, to find his missing wife. Following up on a few leads, Lew finds himself being trailed by a mysterious burly man, and saddled with another missing person case, this time a runaway teen. With the help of some friends, Lew seems to be getting closer and closer to Melanie, but will he find her before the unthinkable happens?
Frankly, a killer doesn't give a damn about offing Clark Gable-or Toby Peters-in this 'fast-paced and colorful addition to a very successful series' (Publishers Weekly).
On December 10, 1938, Atlanta burned again. In the back lot at David O. Selznick's studio, sets from a dozen old pictures were pushed together and set ablaze to provide a backdrop for the climax of what Selznick promised to be the movie of the century: Gone with the Wind. Toby Peters, then just a studio security guard, was on hand to help keep the Confederate extras in line. When the fire was over, he found one of them dead, impaled on his own sword.
Five years later, Peters scratches out a living as a private detective for Hollywood's best known stars. Now it's Clark Gable who needs his help. He's been getting death threats. On the back of a cryptic poem, the sleuth finds a list of people on scene the night the extra died. Two are already dead, and the rest are next. Sure enough, one of those marked for death is Gable. The other is Toby Peters . . .
'Edgar winner Kaminsky offers plenty of nostalgic fun' as Hollywood PI Toby Peters teams up with Cary Grant in this World War II-era spy romp (Publishers Weekly).
Since the start of World War II, Cary Grant has been working undercover in Hollywood as a spy for the British crown. When a ring of Nazi sympathizers gets wise, they start blackmailing the debonair leading man. Now Grant has hired Toby Peters to handle the payoff. But when the blackmailer is killed, the rumpled detective and the suave movie star are thrust into a complex plot of murder, money, and Nazi spies, leading to a literal cliffhanger . . .
'For anyone with a taste for old Hollywood B-movie mysteries, Edgar winner Kaminsky offers plenty of nostalgic fun in his 22nd book to feature good-natured, unprepossessing sleuth Toby Peters . . . Toby and the acrobatic Grant at his lithe best make an appealing team. The tone is light, the pace brisk, the tongue firmly in cheek.' -Publishers Weekly
Hollywood detective Toby Peters is asleep on his floor when the dentist who shares his office calls, wailing that his wife has left him. While on the one hand, Toby is shocked that a woman as unpleasant as Mildred could ever attract a suitor, he's even more surprised by the name of the alleged Lothario: Peter Lorre, the scaly-voiced, bug-eyed Hollywood character actor.
Though he can't imagine why the dentist would want her back, Toby agrees to track down his missing wife. He finds Lorre in a greasy spoon near the Warner Brothers' lot, but the actor doesn't know a thing about the missing Mildred. Her boyfriend turns out to be a Peter Lorre impersonator, and by the time Toby finds him, he's doing a very credible imitation of a dead man. The bullet was meant for the real Lorre, who has just become Toby's client-whether Toby likes it or not.
An ax-wielding monk hacks at the door. Toby Peters is on the other side, running as fast as his recently broken leg will allow. Alongside him is Salvador Dalí, dressed in a rabbit suit, emphatically muttering "grasshoppers" as they try to make their escape. Dalí insists on being carried across the lawn, so Peters hobbles along with the surrealist in his arms. They get in the car just as the monk chops down the front door. The car doesn't start, and the monk charges silently, ax held aloft. And this isn't even the strangest thing that has happened to Toby Peters this week.
Life has been peculiar ever since the call came from Dalí's wife. Peters, suffering from post-New Year's celebration malaise, was happy to look into the theft of three of Dalí's paintings. He had no idea, however, that the investigation might end with his face being literally turned into something resembling abstract art.
This 'superb mystery-thriller' featuring a Moscow cop reminiscent of Arkady Renko delivers 'riveting suspense' (Publishers Weekly).
Porfiry Rostnikov and his wife Sarah have been in love for decades, since the end of World War II. Now the police inspector is by his wife's bedside as she recuperates from a brain operation, when a massive naked man staggers into her hospital room, scared out of his mind, and tries to jump out the window. Rostnikov restrains the bearlike man, trying to calm him. As orderlies arrive to return the escapee to the mental ward, he cries out: 'The devil came to devour the factory.'
Rostnikov has far more important things on his mind than deciphering the ravings of a lunatic, first among them Sarah's recovery. And of course crime has not stopped while he cares for his wife. Rebels are planting bombs, teenagers are plotting assassinations, and the KGB lurks in every shadow. But despite all these clamors, the man's strange words continue to haunt Rostnikov-and compel him to investigate.
Toby Peters wakes up with a headache, a gun in his face, and a body on the hotel-room bed. He is less surprised by the gun than by the man holding it: Marion Morrison, a.k.a John Wayne. Both of them were lured here by the dead man. The next arrival is a prostitute named Olivia, and hot on her heels is the house detective, who’s come to check on the commotion in Room 303.
Reasoning that nobody knows all four of them besides the desk clerk, Teddy Spaghetti, the two detectives haul Teddy upstairs, where he confesses to the murder. Since Wayne, Peters, and Olivia all have careers to protect, the house detective agrees to keep their names out of it. It’s all very simple—much too simple. As he looks into the murder, Toby finds that powerful people want to stop him from learning what really happened while he was sleeping in Room 303.
On the eve of Pearl Harbor, Howard Hughes hires Hollywood gumshoe Toby Peters to find stolen blueprints in this 'marvelously entertaining' series (Newsday).
Millionaire Howard Hughes likes his secrets. He likes to keep them-and he definitely doesn't like having them stolen. Hollywood PI Toby Peters has a rep for being discreet. So when the film tycoon and aviation magnate needs a detective to very privately investigate the theft of top-secret blueprints taken from his home during one of his fabulous parties, he summons Peters. But what starts as counter-espionage intrigue turns into a triple murder, and Peters soon finds himself bait for a killer.
As America is pulled into World War II, Peters is just trying to stay alive as a gunman chases him through a deserted television soundstage. With help from some unlikely allies-including Basil Rathbone, the silver screen's Sherlock Holmes, and gangster/patriot Bugsy Siegel-Peters is determined to dodge the bullets long enough to recover the blueprints before they fall into the wrong hands.
Working in Hollywood, private eye Toby Peters has met a lot of phonies. But his newest case concerns a four-legged faker who threatens the fate of the free world. A few classy dames have crossed the detective's doorstep, but none can touch the hem of the dress of the First Lady herself, Eleanor Roosevelt, who's come to him on a matter of top-secret national security.
Six months after Pearl Harbor, Mrs. Roosevelt has developed a terrible suspicion. She thinks the president's sprightly Scottish terrier, Fala, has been kidnapped and replaced by an imposter, and she wants Peters to find the real rover-for without him, all may be lost.
As usual, the First Lady is right. Peters learns that the presidential pooch is the linchpin in a fiendish plot against the White House. Fortunately, this old detective has learned some new tricks, and he has no intention of rolling over and playing dead.
Featuring a cameo by Buster Keaton, this Toby Peters mystery is further proof that Edgar Award-winning author Stuart M. Kaminsky 'has a delightfully original mind enriching-rather than borrowing from-an old literary form' (Los Angeles Times).
Moscow's gone to the dogs in the 'imaginative' Edgar Award-winning crime series about a conscientious Russian cop (The New York Times Book Review).
With packs of stray wild canines roaming Moscow, it was inevitable that enterprising criminals would find a way to get rich. As dogfighting became big business, the Mafia got involved, and venues upgraded from alleys and garages to private arenas with padded seats. Police Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov has assigned Sasha Tkach and Elena Timofeyeva to go undercover and bust up a dogfighting ring. But the only ones more vicious than the dogs are the ones who profit from them.
Speaking of fighting in the streets, an international drug cartel has chosen Moscow as its next port of call. One man stands in their way-a young Russian mobster whose brutality is matched only by his madness. In a gang war of this magnitude, no civilian is safe. It's up to Rostnikov and the Office of Special Investigation to prevent a full-scale bloodbath.
'As usual, Kaminsky manages to make the postlapsarian fracas strangely engrossing. His major characters are vivid and varied . . . Good storytelling in yet another of a distinguished series.' -Kirkus Reviews
This Chicago cop drama is 'jam-packed with the stuff of good crime fiction-character, style, place, recognizable human conflict' (The Washington Post).
When the wife of a mob witness is killed and his teenage son is kidnapped, the ransom isn't cash-it's his life. The dead can't testify. If the witness kills himself, the mob will let his son live.
Now veteran cops Abe Lieberman and Bill Hanrahan need to protect their witness from himself while they turn Chicago's gangland upside down to save the kid. It doesn't help that Hanrahan is newly sober in AA, battling drink urges and the guilt of recently losing another informant. Lieberman has seen his partner at his worst with the booze and always had his back. But now both their backs are against the wall, and they'll need to rely on each other and make some hard choices to set this one right.
Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America and Edgar Award Winner Stuart M. Kaminsky 'has the pro's knack of combining quirky people, succinct descriptions, an eye for detail, and dark humor to produce entertainment at its best' (Chicago Sun-Times).
