Books in series
#1
Bullet for a Star
1977
Hard-boiled Hollywood detective Toby Peters finds himself hobnobbing with the luminaries of the silver screen when someone is littering Tinsel Town with corpses and Peters has to put himself between Errol Flynn—and a bullet. First published in 1977, Peters' first case has been out of print since 1987.
#2
Murder on the Yellow Brick Road
1977
Someone had murdered a Munchkin. The little man was lying on his back in the middle of the yellow brick road with his startled eyes looking into the overhead lights of an M.G.M. sound stage. He might have looked kind of cute in a tinsel-town way if it hadn't been for the knife sticking out of his chest.
The year is 1940, and Los Angeles-based private eye Toby Peters has been called before the real-life Wizard of Oz himselfLouis B. Mayer, legendary studio head of Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. His job: to track down a murderer stalking the back lots of one of Hollywood's most powerful movie companies.
Peters sets to work, plumbing the depths of a world of dreamers, child stars, and half-sized philosophers, helped by none other than Clark Gable, Raymond Chandler, and Judy Garland. It's a treacherous trail of clues that Peters must follow; one as winding as the Yellow Brick Road, and deadlier than a field of poppies.
But does Toby Peters possess enough brains, heart, and courage to solve this bizarre case before he becomes the latest victim of Hollywood's new Wicked Witch of the West . .?
#3
You Bet Your Life
1978
Pay him a little bit, he's a little bit tough. Pay very much, he's very much tough. Pay too much, he's too much tough.
1940s Hollywood private eye Toby Peters returns—unfortunately, with an awful case of the flu. Peters is coughing and sniffling his way through the Chicago underworld in a desperate attempt to clear the name of Chico Marx, who is accused of owing $120,000 in gambling debts to the mob.
In addition to gangsters, Peters has to deal with Chico's partners. One of them doesn't speak—he's a silent partner—and the other one goes around with a black mustache. Though if he had his choice, he'd go around with a little blonde.
Things may be looking rough, but with the help of a few other tough guys who're siding with him—Al Capone, Richard Daley, and Ian Fleming—Peters just may have a chance.
#4
The Howard Hughes Affair
1979
Toby Peters is a private detective with sore feet, a bad back, and a tendency to bruise easily. He lives on a strict diet of hot dogs, tacos, shredded wheat, and disaster, and spends most of his time at the wrong end of a gun. Peters has a reputation for keeping his mouth shut...so when a young billionaire named Howard Hughes finds a spy at his dinner party, he wants Peters on the job.
#5
Never Cross a Vampire
1980
Toby Peters' services have just been retained by the private eye's strangest client, the film star Bela Lugosi. After frightening people on screen as Dracula, Lugosi now finds his own life in danger from a stalker.
#6
High Midnight
1981
Someone wants Gary Cooper to make a movie he isn't interested in making, and whoever it is wants him badly enough to get nasty about it.
Cooper takes to the hills, accompanied by a writer named Ernest Hemingway, chased by men with blood in their eyes and murder in their hearts. The problem is that Cooper can't shoot straight and Hemingway can't operate without native bearers and an elephant gun.
Toby Peters can't shoot either, but he doesn't need help... much. Just give him a bowl of cereal and time to decide his next move and Toby will get everything straightened out. Now, if he can only keep Lombardi the gangster from making good on his threat to turn him into kosher hot dogs... .
#7
Catch a Falling Clown
1982
Toby Peters, the Hollywood private eye who has previously saved the likes of Judy Garland, Gary Cooper, and the Marx Brothers, is back. This time there’s trouble under the big top, and his services are required by none other than Emmett Kelly.
A circus elephant has been electrocuted and Kelly fears for his life. Toby goes undercover as a clown and becomes entangled with a cast of bizarre characters, including a 250-pound wrestler/poet, a beautiful snake charmer, an immaculately-dressed Swiss midget, and a baffling witness named Alfred Hitchcock. It’s all in a day’s work for Toby Peters, and in another fast-paced Forties-era mad-cap adventure for his fans.
#8
He Done Her Wrong
1983
As a favor to his brother, Toby Peters does a job for a fading Hollywood divaYou can’t trust a man who’s dressed as Mae West, especially not in Mae West’s house. One of Hollywood’s earliest sex symbols, the whip-smart blonde’s star has fallen since the Hays Code cracked down on the racy repartee that made her famous. Her latest project is a thinly veiled autobiographical novel, whose only copy is stolen just after she finishes her first draft. Tonight she’s having a Mae West party, with every guest a man dressed as her. The thief is among those in drag, and Toby Peters has come to tear off his wig. He’s there as a favor to his brother, a brutal cop who had a fling with West when she first moved to Hollywood. But this is more than a theft. The crook wants to destroy Mae West, and he has murder on his mind.
#9
The Fala Factor
1984
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt turns to Toby Peters when she becomes suspicious that Fala, FDR's beloved Scottie, has been dognapped by a shady veterinarian and that an imposter has been put in its place
#10
Down for the Count
1985
A sensational boxing scam and intrigue follow when Toby Peters discovers his ex-wife's husband dead on a deserted beach and Joe Louis standing beside the corpse
#11
The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance
1986
Vance got shot. A detective got drugged. A hooker was wired. And the desk clerk was punched out. They're all in one room—with an ex-cop and a movie star who want it kept quiet. Also included is "Cain's Mutiny" by Bill Pronzini. The ultimate hold-up by phone. Pay me or I'll kill you. But it's the caller who should be afraid. Unabridged. Available now.
#12
Smart Moves
1987
Toby Peters, a L.A. private detective, is determined to save Albert Einstein and Paul Robeson from a Nazi assassin
#13
Think Fast, Mr. Peters
1988
When he becomes the prime suspect in the shooting death of a Peter Lorre imitator, 1940s P.I. Toby Peters is determined to find the true killer, before the real Peter Lorre becomes a victim. Reprint.
#14
Buried Caesars
1989
Hollywood private eye Toby Peters is asked to find an aide to General Douglas MacArthur, who has disappeared with information that could ruin the general's nascent political career
#15
Poor Butterfly
1990
1991, mass market paperback reprint edition, Mysterious Press, NY. 179 pages. Toby Peters finds himself in San Francisco in 1942. He immediately also finds trouble in the world of opera. He investigates a new death when a man falls from a high scaffold. Will the show go on?
#16
The Melting Clock
1991
In wartime L.A., milk prices are up. Margarine and gas can t be bought. For private eye Toby Peters, shoplifting patrol at the local Ralph s Grocery has been the only steady work. Into this grind of reality comes a hefty, dubiously welcome dose of surrealism, in the person of Salvador Dali, encamped in nearby Beverly Hills. The artful madman whose professed mission is to shock the world every twenty-four hours, Dali has seen his latest publicity stunt go fatally, frighteningly amok. Drawn into a bizarre new world of mustaches without faces, crumbling stone women, and watches melting on the Victory Drugstore grill, Toby has to hunt down a treasure of three precious paintings and three priceless clocks, while wading though a growing thicket of dead bodies. Hovering over the twisted landscape is the curse of a killer even madder than Daliand more indestructible than a Sherman tank...
#17
The Devil Met a Lady
1993
Why has fabulous Bette Davis - the best known face in the world behind Roosevelt and Hitler - been kidnapped not once, not twice, but three times? What in the world does this star abduction have to do with Third Reich designs on America's plans for a top-secret superbomber? And who else but Hollywood private eye Toby Peters - always short of a nightmare, far from a dream - to plunge into his seventeenth and most hair-raising adventure in pursuit of the answers? It begins with a frantic call from the elegant Arthur Farnsworth, an alcoholic designer of aircraft machinery and, not incidentally, Bette's most current husband. Farnsworth, spinning a tale of illicit passion and brazen blackmail, hires Peters to out-navigate the Nazis, as well as keep an eye on his illustrious wife. Spending about a third of his waking time on the phone and another third on his back (usually in hospitals). Peters penetrates a hapless spy ring composed of fourth-rate Tinseltown tough guys. He delves far too deeply for his own good into the bedroom peccadillos of America's glitter set. And, as bodies build around him, he sets off to the rescue of a movie goddess. But who'll protect Toby Peters from the divine Miss Davis? The Devil met a Lady heralds the long-awaited reunion of Toby Peters, vintage L.A.'s saltiest hard-boiled sleuth, with the greatest luminaries of the silver screen's golden age.
#18
Tomorrow Is Another Day
1995
It's 1938 and P.I. Toby Peters is watching Atlanta burn in the biggest scene in the biggest movie ever made. When an extra is found lying dead in a ditch, Toby could swear he sees Clark Gable—Rhett Butler himself—watching from the shadows. Now, years later, Gable is receiving anonymous death threats in poetry. And frankly, my dear, why should Toby give a damn? HC: Mysterious Press.
#19
Dancing in the Dark
1996
Fred Astaire hires Toby Peters to help him get rid of an incredibly untalented dance student, whose tutelage he has been forced to undertake by her threatening mafioso boyfriend. Reprint.
#20
A Fatal Glass of Beer
1997
What an amazing—and not famous enough by half—mystery writer Stuart M. Kaminsky is! By last count, he has been doing excellent work in three very different series: his sad and pungent books about Russian detective Porfiry Petrovich (Blood and Rubles, etc.); his gritty, poignant stories about aging Chicago cop Abe Lieberman (starting with Lieberman's Day); and his richly-detailed series about vintage Hollywood private eye Toby Peters. This 20th installment is one of the best, as Peters is hired by W. C. Fields to find the blackguard who is looting all of the comedian's secret bank accounts, carefully hidden under such fake names as Cormorant Beecham and Quigley E. Sneersight. Other Peters period adventures in paperback: Dancing in the Dark, He Done Her Wrong, Think Fast, Mr. Peters.
#21
A Few Minutes Past Midnight
2001
Toby Peters is an unusual private eye. He's already cracked cases involving Humphrey Bogart, the Marx Brothers, John Wayne and Mae West, and now is gumshoeing for the celebrated screen star Charlie Chaplin. Welcome to Hollywood.
Chaplin has cause for alarm. A sinister visitor wielding a large knife has not only rudely paid the movie legend a midnight call but also threatened him with death unless he stops production on his latest project, a film in which wealthy old women are married and then murdered for their money. Chaplin has been warned, too, that he'd better stay away from one Fiona Sullivan, or else. And Fiona, of course, is Toby's only lead ...
#22
To Catch a Spy
2002
With a hilarious new Hollywood thriller and in the hire of the urbane, amusing screen star Cary Grant, private investigator Toby Peters continues a madcap career that has cast him as sleuth to such movie luminaries as Humphrey Bogart, the Marx Brothers, Bette Davis, Mae West, and Charlie Chaplin. Like many a movie mystery, this one begins in the middle of the night, when Toby, trying to deliver a package at Grant's behest, finds himself with a corpse on his hands, a lump on his head, and an odd message from a dying man. Now in pursuit of a murderer, Toby and Grant, who proves to be no less acrobatic than he is resourceful, follow a trail of clues that leads them eventually to a den of Nazi sympathizers and finally to a nighttime confrontation on a mountaintop with a very determined and formidably well-armed killer. As always, Toby can count on the aid of his friends: the unsanitary dentist Shelly Minck, with whom Toby shares an office; the huge wrestler-turned-poet Jerry Butler; the suave Swiss little person Gunther Whertman, who has mastered as many languages as he has skills; and Mrs. Irene Plaut, Toby's daffy but dogged landlady. As always, too, all four lend Toby their loyalty and support, although they are more likely to add to the chaos. "Kaminsky has such a good time writing, and he so loves the period, that the reader is swept along willy-nilly."—New York Times Book Review "Makes the totally wacky possible.... Peters [is] an unblemished delight."—Washington Post
#23
Mildred Pierced
2003
That down-at-the-heels gumshoe Toby Peters again proves to be “an unblemished delight,” as the Washington Post Book World put it, while his creator, Stuart M. Kaminsky, continues to “make the totally wacky possible” in a zany new Hollywood adventure. Having survived the hire of such movie luminaries as Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis, Charlie Chaplin, and Cary Grant, tinsel-town detective Toby finds himself in the employ of an edgy Joan Crawford. Actually, Toby needs Miss Crawford as much as she needs him. His longtime friend and office mate, the mad dentist Sheldon Minck, has been jailed for murder—the victim, his estranged wife, Mildred; the motive, a $200,000 inheritance; the weapon, a crossbow. Only Miss Crawford, the single witness to the crime, can attest to hapless Minck’s innocence. But the former MGM movie queen has just been offered her first film in two years, as the title character in Mildred Pierce, so she is anxious to avoid unpleasant publicity that could cost her the role. So it’s up to Toby to solve the crime, save Minck, and thus keep Miss Crawford’s famous name out of the daily papers.
#24
Now You See It
2004
Illusion gets more deadly than reality on Toby Peters' twenty-fourth outing from Edgar-winning author Stuart M. Kaminsky. A string of star-studded successes―most recently with Cary Grant in To Catch a Spy and an edgy Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierced―has won Tinseltown detective Toby Peters a bit of local celebrity, and that's something his new client, Harry Blackstone, understands. At the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles, Blackstone is billed as the World's Greatest Living Magician. Of course, should the giant buzz saw in the climax to Blackstone's act cut the beautiful young woman in fact in half, his sterling reputation would be ruined. And someone among the Los Angeles Friends of Magic is decidedly intent upon ruining it―whatever the price, including the life of Toby's prime suspect. Unfortunately, with the corpse count mounting, the evidence is pointing increasingly to Toby's client as the man behind the murders. As always, adding to the wackiness of Toby's investigation are the ungentle dentist Sheldon Minck, wrestler-poet Jeremy Butler, the suave, small-statured Swiss multilingualist Gunter Wherthman, and daffy Mrs. Plaut. But to solve the case, Toby finds he needs someone else―the dashing star of the movie A Thousand and One Nights, Cornel Wilde.
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.
