Books in series
#1
Lieberman's Folly
1991
Sixty-year-old Chicago police detective Abe Lieberman is having all the troubles he can handle when Estralda Valdez, a stunning Mexican prostitute, comes to him with a proposition he can't refuse: Estralda will help him with valuable information if he'll get a john off her back. But Lieberman's good intentions pave the way for a brutal murder. A murder that will lead Lieberman into the darkest depths of Chicago crime and corruption, and into the kind of trouble that could get him killed . . .
#2
Lieberman's Choice
1993
"Kaminsky gets his details exactly right....Tightly plotted...The best mysteries work on multiple levels, and this one is no exception."
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Detective Sergeant Abe Lieberman is about to wake up to every policeman's nightmare—an out-of-control colleague hell-bent on revenge. After gunning down his wife and her lover, a fellow cop, Bernie Shepard has retreated to a makeshift bunker atop his high-rise apartment buliding, armed with a high-powered rifle and enough explosives to destroy a neighborhood. Holding his former comrades Lieberman and Bill Hanrahan desperately at bay, he issues his single a confrontation with police captain Alan Kearney—or else, widespread slaughter. Either way, Leiberman knows, it's a choice that can only end in disaster.
#3
Lieberman's Day
1994
"Beautifully rendered . . . Kaminsky is extraordinarily attuned to the domestic minutiae of his detectives' lives." The New York Times Book Review
Aging Chicago cop Abe Lieberman's day begins with a predawn phone his nephew, David, has been killed in a mugging, and David's wife is seriously wounded. From there it's all downhill for Lieberman, as a day of terrifying confrontations with duty and desire unfolds, shocking the cop who thought he'd seen it all with revelations he could never have foreseen, or wanted to . . .
#4
Lieberman's Thief
1995
"OUTSTANDING . . . Another stellar performance, alight with menace and compassion."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Career burglar George "Pitty-Pitty" Patniks plots his crimes down to the tiniest detail, so hitting the suburban Chicago home of a well-to-do couple is a cinch. He knows exactly what to expect—until murder interrupts his "perfect" heist.
In his sixty-some years, most of them spent as a cop, Abe Lieberman has seen it all. And his instincts tell him that something doesn't add up in the evidence left after Dana Rozier's savage killing. The victim's grieving husband has a solid alibi, and everything points to a burglary gone bad. But the weary, wise Lieberman knows better, as he races with a killer to find the one man who knows the truth...
"A LIVELY, COLORFUL SERIES. Kaminsky is blessed with a finely tuned ear. That, plus an obvious affection for ethnicity (all varieties), enables him to breathe life into characters."
—The Philadelphia Inquirer
"Kaminsky expertly juggles the moods of his prose: comic, scary, murderous."
—Publishers Weekly
#5
Lieberman's Law
1996
Abe Lieberman, the Chicago PD detective, has never has it easy when it comes to emotional cases, but this time the action is getting little too close to home. His temple has been vandalized along with four others, and it looks like the vandals have more sinister plans in mind. Finding the culprit opens a window on the broiling ethnic tensions on Chicago's North Side, and what's happening in Abe's family life does nothing to turn down the heat. If he and his partner, Hanrahan, can locate the vandals who have targeted the city's Jews, they may be able to put a stop to some of the madness before violence enters the picture.
#6
The Big Silence
2000
Abe Lieberman is a strong, sympathetic character, an Everyman whose love for his family is only matched by his quiet, zealous commitment to justice: "A figure out of Talmudic lore-endearing, wise in his crotchets, weary with his wisdom." says The Washington Post. He loves what he does and it takes its toll as his commitment to what is right is sorely tested every day on the mean streets of Chicago. As a moral man, he is sometimes faced with some uncomfortable ethical choices in order to see that justice-rather than the letter of the law-is metered out.
The Big Silence takes Lieberman and his Irish partner, Bill Hanrahan-the Rabbi and the Priest, as they are known on the streets-on a journey that will test their consciences to the limit. When the young son of an informant in a governmental witness protection program is kidnapped and a grisly death occurs, they will have to make some hard choices to make things right. Told with compassion and with the keen insight into the human psyche, The Big Silence is gritty, compelling...and unforgettable.
#7
Not Quite Kosher
2002
Abe Lieberman is a strong, sympathetic character, an Everyman whose love for his family is only matched by his quiet, zealous commitment to justice. "A figure out of Talmudic lore-endearing, wise in his crotchets, weary with his wisdom," says The Washington Post. He loves what he does, but it takes its toll as his commitment to what is right is sorely tested every day on the mean streets of Chicago. As a moral man, he is sometimes faced with some uncomfortable ethical choices in order to see that justice-rather than the letter of the law-is meted out.
And in Not Quite Kosher, the latest Abe Lieberman mystery by veteran Edgar Award-winning Stuart Kaminsky, our hangdog sleuth is up to his eyeballs in tsurris, the kind of trouble that will drive a man to madness. From tracking a pair of low-rent thieves who stumble into a heist way over their heads to finding out what happened to a man who predicted his own death in a bizarre twist of fate, not to mention planning for a grandson's bar mitzvah that threatens to send him to the poorhouse, Lieberman will do much to find a way to make everything right, even if it takes years off his life.
And his Irish partner, Bill Hanrahn, the Priest to Lieberman's Rabbi, is in trouble of his own making. For the woman he loves is the object of affection of one of the kingpins of the Asian crime syndicate in Chicago and the notion of this woman marrying anyone from a different culture is anathema. How far will he go to win the woman he loves? And at what cost?
Just another day in the lives of a pair of Chicago's most amiably odd detective team . . .
#8
The Last Dark Place
2004
One of Stuart M. Kaminsky's most memorable characters, Abe Lieberman is a veteran detective who uses his head and heart more than his gun. Lieberman loves what he does and this takes a toll as his commitment to what is right is sorely tested every day on the mean streets of Chicago. As a moral man, he is sometimes faced with uncomfortable ethical choices in order to see that justice—rather than the letter of the law-is meted out.
With The Last Dark Place, Lieberman and his Irish partner Bill Hanrahan, known on the streets as the Rabbi and the Priest, have their hands full with dark matters both professional and personal.
Lieberman goes to Arizona on an extradition case to pick up a mob enforcer that goes horribly awry when the man he is slated to bring back is gunned down at the airport. He comes back from this disaster determined to find out who arranged the hit, and explain to his superiors just how he could have let this happen on his watch.
And there's the little matter of pulling off Lieberman's grandson's bar mitzvah, which threatens to bankrupt him.
While Lieberman is away, Hanrahan has his hands full. Coupled with a temporary partner who is racist, sexist and a general bane of human existence, Hanrahan has to deal with a rape case involving the young wife of a fellow police officer. Hanrahan must race to find the culprits because he knows homicidal rage when he sees it and knows that it is only a matter of time before the officer takes the law into his own hands.
And then there's a young man who dreams of being a star...or killing one to get the notoriety.
#9
Terror Town
2006
"Carl Zwick is an aging Chicago Cubs baseball player. Sometimes he feels like he's spent his life hitting into double plays, but he's finally gotten onto the right track. Then tragedy strikes him out." "Anita Mills is a pretty black single mother just trying to get by. A random act of brutality in one of Chicago's rougher neighborhoods permanently ends her struggle." "Richard Allen Smith walks the streets of ChiTown saying God has sent him. He has an unusual, rather nasty way of getting converts to see the light." "What do these people have in common?" "Nothing, it would seem, except that they are all part of Detective Lieberman's very long day. Lieberman, a sad, baggy-eyed spaniel of a man with the patience of Job and the wisdom of Solomon, is trying his best to make his beloved Chicago a better place." But when Lieberman and his partner, Bill Hanrahan, encounter these three very different situations, they find that there are ties that bind and ties that can cut a man's heart out. Abe Lieberman faces a Gordian knot that he must somehow untangle - and if he makes a mistake, someone very near to him could die.
#10
The Dead Don't Lie
2007
The Dead Don't Lie is the latest in Edgar Award winner and MWA's Grand Master Stuart Kaminsky's Abe Lieberman mystery series. Lieberman and his partner, Bill Hanrahan, are hell or heaven bent on making the mean streets of Chicago just a little safer.
As usual they have their hands full. Three prominent members of the Turkish community are all brutally murdered and Lieberman works to find out what, if anything, ties these murders together. It doesn't help that the key to the puzzle might be an event that took place over a century ago.
Bill Hanrahan finds himself assigned to a case where a hospitalized chef claims to have been beaten by two people and shot by a third, a bespectacled Chinese man. As Bill digs deeper he finds himself at odds with an old nemesis, a man who has an unusual affinity for Bill's Asian wife.
Both men struggle to do the right thing even if it means bending the letter if not the spirit of the law.
Author
Stuart M. Kaminsky
Author · 68 books
Stuart M. Kaminsky wrote 50 published novels, 5 biographies, 4 textbooks and 35 short stories. He also has screenwriting credits on four produced films including ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, ENEMY TERRITORY, A WOMAN IN THE WIND and HIDDEN FEARS. He was a past president of the Mystery Writers of America and was nominated for six prestigious Edgar Allen Poe Awards including one for his short story “Snow” in 1999. He won an Edgar for his novel A COLD RED SUNRISE, which was also awarded the Prix De Roman D’Aventure of France. He was nominated for both a Shamus Award and a McCavity Readers Choice Award. Kaminsky wrote several popular series including those featuring Lew Fonesca, Abraham Lieberman, Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, and Toby Peters. He also wrote two original "Rockford Files " novels. He was the 50th annual recipient of the Grandmaster 2006 for Lifetime Achievement from the Mystery Writers of America. Received the Shamus Award, "The Eye" (Lifetime achievement award) in 2007. His nonfiction books including BASIC FILMMAKING, WRITING FOR TELEVISION, AMERICAN FILM GENRES, and biographies of GARY COOPER, CLINT EASTWOOD, JOHN HUSTON and DON SIEGEL. BEHIND THE MYSTERY was published by Hot House Press in 2005 and nominated by Mystery Writers of America for Best Critical/Biographical book in 2006. Kaminsky held a B.S. in Journalism and an M.A. in English from The University of Illinois and a Ph.D. in Speech from Northwestern University where he taught for 16 years before becoming a Professor at Florida State. where he headed the Graduate Conservatory in Film and Television Production. He left Florida State in 1994 to pursue full-time writing. Kaminsky and his wife, Enid Perll, moved to St. Louis, Missouri in March 2009 to await a liver transplant to treat the hepatitis he contracted as an army medic in the late 1950s in France. He suffered a stroke two days after their arrival in St. Louis, which made him ineligible for a transplant. He died on October 9, 2009.
