Stuart M. Kaminsky
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Toby Peters mysteries volume 8
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He Done Her Wrong is one of the most ingenious of the Toby Peters mystery series, for it has all the ingredients of the perfect crime.
As a private eye, Toby Peters has had some pretty impressive clients over the years, but none of them has been quite as memorable as his latest: a tough-as-nails, sharp-witted, damsel-in-distress named Mae West. Mae, it seems, has discovered that her only copy of her sizzling autobiography is missing. Without
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A Moscow cop is left out in the cold in this "impressive" Edgar Award winner for Best Mystery Novel (The Washington Post Book World).
When forced to choose between the law and the party line, Police Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov has a disturbing tendency to fight for justice, and that has won him no friends at the Kremlin. Now his enemies in the KGB have arranged a transfer to the lowest rungs of Moscow law enforcement, a backwater department...
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Toby Peters mysteries volume 2
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In this "marvelously entertaining" mystery, a hard-boiled Hollywood private eye investigates a murdered Munchkin on the set of The Wizard of Oz (Newsday).
A year after The Wizard of Oz's smash success, the yellow brick road is crumbling. The famous sets have been left standing on a soundstage in the depths of the MGM back lot in case the studio greenlights a sequel. But that doesn't explain what Judy Garland is doing there-or why she finds a...
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Toby Peters mysteries volume 3
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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...
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Toby Peters guards a horror icon against a gang of crazed vampire enthusiasts Coffins fill the basement of a crumbling Los Angeles movie theater. Five vampires crowd around fading horror idol Bela Lugosi, peppering him with questions. A malfunctioning plastic fang causes one of the undead-wannabes to lisp. The effect is less than fearsome, but Lugosi is terrified, for one of these oddballs has been making threats on his life. He hires Toby Peters...
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In the faltering Soviet Union, the KGB will do anything to hold on to power A Jewish man in a squalid government flat finds a killer in his shower. A young punk girl hurtles naked through the window of her apartment. And in the Crimea, at a health retreat for mid-level functionaries, an aging policeman's death is made to look like heart failure. It's this last murder that catches Porfiry Rostnikov's attention. The inspector's wife is recovering...
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Abe Lieberman mysteries volume 6
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When a witness's son is kidnapped, Chicago's gangland erupts into chaos Once a college football star, Bill Hanrahan has had a hard time of it ever since his bad knees kept him out of the pros. He became a homicide detective with the unfortunate reputation of losing witnesses and loving the bottle. Now Hanrahan is off the sauce, and working a job that should be straightforward: He's guarding a mob informant's ex-wife and teenage son while they tour...
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Lew Fonesca mysteries volume 6
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Lovable everyman Lew Fonesca, the man who makes things work in Sarasota, takes on the cases of seventeen-year-old Ronnie Graeill accused of bludgeoning to death a local curmudgeon who has been campaigning to end state-sponsored school funding and a semi-retired and much beloved singer of children's songs who is being blackmailed.
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Toby Peters mysteries volume 24
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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...
10) Smart Moves
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Toby Peters mysteries volume 12
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Only Toby Peters stands in the way of a plot to murder Albert Einstein A dentist dangles from the window of a swanky Park Avenue hotel. Toby Peters, a Los Angeles detective who's very far from home, clutches the man by his jacket, which tears slowly, stich by stich. A dead man lies on the bed, while his killer batters the room door, which is going to pieces as quickly as the dentist's jacket. Somehow, this entire mess is Albert Einstein's fault. ...
11) To Catch a Spy
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Toby Peters mysteries volume 22
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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...
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Just days after the end of the USSR, a mysterious priest becomes a martyr In service of his beloved Orthodox Church, Father Merhum has spent decades battling Soviet apparatchiks and the KGB. Now the Soviet Union is gone, but the bureaucracy survives, and the aged priest makes plans to denounce Communist supporters, including some within the Church. He is on his way to Moscow when an assassin stops him with an ax. And as he dies, Merhum begs for forgivenessa...
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Toby Peters mysteries volume 7
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A circus stakeout puts Toby Peters at the bottom of the food chain The gorilla doesn't like clowns. Normally that wouldn't bother Toby Peters, since detective work tends to keep him far away from animal cages, but tonight he's dressed as a clown and locked in with the ape. The animal's handler told him not to worry-gorillas don't eat people. They just like to tear their arms and legs off. What the ape doesn't understand is that Peters is here for...
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Lew Fonesca mysteries volume 5
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Four years ago Lew Fonesca's wife was struck and killed in a hit-and-run within sight of their apartment. He fled Chicago, driving mindlessly until his car gave up the ghost in Sarasota, FL. Working from a cheap office behind the Dairy Queen on Highway 301, he makes a threadbare living as a process server and savors his clinical depression like a fine wine.
Life's a sneaky mistress, though, and has a way of suckering you into caring. Lew's found...
15) Tarnished Icons
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Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov mysteries volume 11
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Rostnikov uncovers a crime spree with roots in a long-lost Tsarist treasure Porfiry Rostnikov was just a boy when he lobbed a grenade at the Nazi tank, destroying the evil machine and his left leg with it. And after five decades' dragging his lame leg behind him, the police inspector decides to have the useless limb amputated. The Cold War is over, and as Russia learns to walk again, its finest policeman must do the same. Meanwhile, a knife-wielding...
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Abe Lieberman mysteries volume 1
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A pair of cops hunt the killer of the most beautiful hooker on Chicago's North Side On a blistering Chicago afternoon, the Cubs are winning and Abe Lieberman is waiting to meet a prostitute. This mild-mannered old police detective still has a few tricks up his sleeves-and one of them is named Estralda Valdez. One of the city's loveliest women of the night, she is Lieberman's most prized confidential informant, and she needs help with a psychotic john....
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Toby Peters mysteries volume 21
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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...
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Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov mysteries volume 12
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An international gang war chooses Moscow as its battlefield Moscow police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov has adapted well to life without Communism. But under the Soviets, blood feuds were pursued in the dark halls of bureaucracy, and now they take place in the streets. An international drug ring has chosen Moscow as its next port of call, and the only thing standing in its way is the budding Russian mob, headed by a young man whose brutality is matched...
19) A Fine Red Rain
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Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov fights to stop a vendetta against the acrobats of the Moscow circus A drunk perches atop the statue of Nikolai Gogol in Arbat Square, and police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov sighs. After years fighting to become a top detective, he has suffered a demotion to the minor crimes unit, which means the lunatic on the statue is his responsibility. But the limping policeman fails to talk the distraught man down, and with a perfect...
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Toby Peters mysteries volume 16
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A prank by a flamboyant Spanish artist could cost Toby Peters his life 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, insistently 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...