Stuart M Kaminsky

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...

To avenge a long-ago death, a killer puts Toby Peters in his sights 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 alight 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 dozens of Confederate extras in line....

Toby hunts for the man who wants to kill a fallen star of silent film As Toby Peters crouches behind a tombstone, hiding from a crazed gunman, the private eye thinks of Charlie Chaplin. A few days earlier, the pioneer of film comedy sat in Toby's office, and told him of the hundreds of people who want him dead. Beloved when his public could not hear him speak, his political leanings have made him a pariah. Right-wing radicals, the Ku Klux Klan, and...

Lew Fonesca is a man who does things for people. He makes small problems go away and tries to keep the larger ones from landing his clients in jail. He finds deadbeats, errant spouses, and generally keeps the populace of Sarasota on the up and up. Now Lew is faced with one case that will try his patience...and another that may break his heart. The first involves an elderly woman who swears she's witnessed a murder in her old age home despite the...

A simple job turns treacherous when Toby Peters stumbles upon a corpse It's a lucky thing that Cary Grant once trained as an acrobat, because Toby Peters's life is in the actor's hands. As the two men sprint through the pitch-dark woods, trying to elude the man with the gun, they come to a canyon ledge. With nowhere to go but down, they scramble over the side. Peters slips, and Grant grabs hold of his wrist. As the killer closes in, Cary's grip begins...

Toby tries to clear a dentist accused of a medieval murder Though an otherwise unremarkable woman, Mildred Minck has the distinction of being the first citizen of Los Angeles to be murdered by crossbow. The police find her dentist husband, Sheldon, standing over the body with the weapon, swearing that only Joan Crawford can identify the real killer. An insanity defense seems a natural fit, but Sheldon wants his neighbor, private investigator Toby...

When his temple is defaced, Lieberman battles Chicago's most hateful citizens Over a decades-long career in Chicago homicide, Abe Lieberman has something most cops only dream of: a personal life. He has hobbies, a wife, and a grandchild who is about to celebrate his bar mitzvah. But Lieberman's personal and professional lives collide when his temple is attacked by vandals, and he uncovers a river of hate that runs right through the heart of Chicago's...

A huckster repeatedly robs a comedian, leading Toby on a cross-country chase The bank accounts are in the names of men like Otis J. Raisincluster, Quigley E. Sneersight, and Cormorant Beecham, but any comedy connoisseur knows that names that nonsensical could come only from the twisted brain of W. C. Fields. When toiling on the vaudeville circuit, the acid-tongued comic actor opened a new account in every town he played, adding up to a mountain of...

Toby and his brother team up to protect a magician from disappearing for good In the six years since he lost his job working security at the Warner Brothers' lot, private investigator Toby Peters has taken cases from oddballs ranging from Peter Lorre to W. C. Fields. But none of them had the stage presence of Harry Blackstone, the greatest magician in the world. When an anonymous rival demands the illusionist reveal his secrets on stage or suffer...

A killer terrorizes the San Francisco opera, and Toby Peters may be his next victim The year 1942 is a bad time to stage Madama Butterfly. Although Puccini's masterpiece is a perennial favorite of the San Francisco opera crowd, its sympathetic depiction of a Japanese girl causes tension in the dark months following Pearl Harbor. Newspaper editorialists rage against the production, opera buffs picket the theater, and a note appears nailed to the house...