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Summary
Summary
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.
Author Notes
Stuart M. Kaminsky is head of the radio/television/film department at Northwestern University in Illinois. He is also a writer of textbooks, screenplays, and mystery novels.
The more popular of his two series of detective novels features Toby Peters. Set in the 1930s and 1940s, the Peters books draw on Kaminsky's knowledge of history and love of film by incorporating characters from the film industry's past in nostalgic mysteries. Murder on the Yellow Brick Road (1978), for example, features Judy Garland while Catch a Falling Clown (1982) stars Emmett Kelley as Peters's client and Alfred Hitchcock as a murder suspect.
His other critically acclaimed series chronicles the cases of Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov. Kaminsky's detailed studies of Russian police procedure combined with aspects of life in Russia have earned the Series an Edgar nomination for Black Knight in Red Square (1984) and the 1989 Edgar Award for A Cold Red Sunrise (1988).
Stuart Kaminsky was born in Chicago in 1934 and died in 2009.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Old pro Kaminsky serves up his usual amiable blend of nostalgia, humor, eccentricity and a mystery built around a celebrity (typically a film star) in his 23rd book to feature PI Toby Peters (after 2002's To Catch a Spy). While his long career hasn't been lucrative, it has allowed Toby to assemble a wealth of unusual friends, including dentist Sheldon Minck. Sheldon gets in over his head when he takes up with a strange survivalist group and, apparently, slays his wife with either a well-aimed or an errant crossbow bolt. Sheldon has the weapon and the motive, and the police have Sheldon and a witness who is none other than Joan Crawford. Getting Sheldon out of jail and keeping the actress out of the news become Toby's twin priorities. Toby still lives at Irene Plaut's boarding house and struggles with his relations with his brother, Phil. Kaminsky fashions the character of his guest star from bits and pieces of her public and private personas so that Crawford appears both familiar and new. While the mystery as such may be routine, details of the time (1944), from Toby's car (a Crosley) to the radio shows (The Aldrich Family) to the projected price of a postwar car ($900 for most, as much as $1,400 for a "luxury" model), will bring smiles of recognition to older readers. (July 9) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Detective to the stars Toby Peters (To Catch a Spy, 2002, etc.) finds a client tougher than he is when he investigates the death of his officemate's wife. Joan Crawford isn't going to lie for anyone, so it's a shame she's the sole witness when dentist Sheldon Minck's faithless wife Mildred is shot with a crossbow bolt just yards from where Shelley is practicing the techniques he's learned, sort of, from survivalist Lawrence Timerjack. But she'd rather not testify at all, since the publicity might cost her the lead in Mildred Pierce. So Toby agrees to help shield her from the press, hoping that getting close to the case will help him clear Shelly. He gets unexpected help from his brother Phil, whose anger-management issues intensify as his wife Ruth succumbs to cancer, and expected grief from John Cawelti, a detective with a grudge against Phil. He gets the usual misguided advice from his loopy landlady, Mrs. Plaut, and the usual aid and comfort from his girlfriend Anita. And he gets tailed, shot with a blowgun, lured into traps, and blown up as he discovers that Pathfinder Anthony, Pathfinder Lewis, and Deerslayer Helter--Timerjack's fellow Survivors for the Future--are interested in their survival, not his. But Crawford never blinks, fending off threats of exposure from Cawelti and of destruction by the Survivors as she waits for her next close-up. More somber than Toby's usual antic fare, perhaps out of respect for Ruth. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
A woman named Mildred is pierced by a bolt from a crossbow in a public park; Joan Crawford, out on an errand before she begins filming Mildred Pierce, witnesses the killing. So, Kaminski's punny title for the twenty-third Toby Peters mystery perfectly captures the ridiculous (in the best sense of the term) cross-cutting between detection and movie lore that has long been the hallmark of this series. Peters' career as an ex-cop-current private eye spans a fascinating chunk of Hollywood movie history, from the Depression-- Murder on the Yellow Brick Road (1977), in which Peters took on the case of an allegedly murderous Munchkin--into World War II. Now, it's June 1944. Toby is still figuring out the ration points for his boardinghouse landlady and renting office space from the dentist Sheldon Minck. It's Minck who's in trouble, big time, because he admits shooting the crossbow that killed his wife but insists it was another of his many klutzy accidents. Peters is working for both Minck, who hires him to help prove his innocence, and Joan Crawford, who hires him to keep her name out of the papers. As Peters investigates, he is pulled into a bizarre world of survivalists who want Minck dead and, once again, into the bizarre world of Hollywood infighting. Kaminsky stands out as a subtle historian, unobtrusively but entertainingly weaving into the story itself what people were wearing, eating, driving, and listening to on the radio. A page-turning romp. --Connie Fletcher Copyright 2003 Booklist
