<div>With &ldquo;shades of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett,&rdquo; a 1940s Los Angeles private eye must recover FDR&rsquo;s kidnapped dog (The San Diego Union-Tribune). Working in Hollywood, private eye Toby Peters has met a lot of phonies. But his newest case concerns a four-legged faker who threatens the fate of the free world. A few classy dames have crossed the detective&rsquo;s doorstep, but none can touch the hem of the dress of the First Lady herself, Eleanor Roosevelt, who&rsquo;s come to him on a matter of top-secret national security. Six months after Pearl Harbor, Mrs. Roosevelt has developed a terrible suspicion. She thinks the president&rsquo;s sprightly Scottish terrier, Fala, has been kidnapped and replaced by an imposter, and she wants Peters to find the real rover&mdash;for without him, all may be lost. As usual, the First Lady is right. Peters learns that the presidential pooch is the linchpin in a fiendish plot against the White House. Fortunately, this old detective has learned some new tricks, and he has no intention of rolling over and playing dead. Featuring a cameo by Buster Keaton, this Toby Peters mystery is further proof that Edgar Award&ndash;winning author Stuart M. Kaminsky &ldquo;has a delightfully original mind enriching&mdash;rather than borrowing from&mdash;an old literary form&rdquo; (Los Angeles Times).</div>

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The Fala Factor

<div>A hard-boiled Hollywood PI has to work without a net to save Emmett Kelly from a killer who&rsquo;s not clowning around: &ldquo;Nostalgic fun&rdquo; (Publishers Weekly). In February 1942, Californians may be living in fear of a Japanese attack, but the show must go on. The circus is in town&mdash;unfortunately so is a killer saboteur who&rsquo;s targeting the star attractions. Private detective Toby Peters is no stranger to going undercover, but this is the first time his disguise will include a red nose. The killer has already electrocuted an elephant, and hobo clown Emmett Kelly has had a close brush with death. The second-rate circus in this sleepy coastal town seems like another world from Peters&rsquo;s usual Hollywood beat, but of all people, Alfred Hitchcock, the director of Suspicion, is under suspicion. With the investigation on the verge of becoming a three-ring circus, it&rsquo;s up to Toby Peters to cage the killer before anyone else meets a bad end under the big top. Edgar Award winner Stuart M. Kaminsky&rsquo;s &ldquo;Toby Peters series [is] a delight . . . Written with more than a dash of humor&rdquo; and this big-top murder mystery is a &ldquo;fun, lightweight book for all mystery fans&rdquo; (Library Journal).</div>

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Catch a Falling Clown

<div>The first in a mystery series set in 1940s Hollywood, where a hard-boiled private eye helps a cast of real-life stars: &ldquo;Nostalgic fun&rdquo; (Publishers Weekly). Hollywood, 1940: It&rsquo;s been four years since security guard Toby Peters got fired from the Warner Brothers lot for breaking a screen cowboy&rsquo;s arm. Since then he&rsquo;s scratched out a living as a private detective&mdash;missing persons and bodyguard work mostly&mdash;but now his old friends, the Warners, have a job for him. Someone has mailed the studio a picture of Errol Flynn caught in a compromising position with an underage woman. Although Flynn insists it&rsquo;s a fake, the studio is taking no chances. Peters is to deliver the blackmailer five thousand dollars and return with the photo negative. It should be simple, but Flynn, a swashbuckler on and off the screen, has a way of making things complicated. Soon it&rsquo;s up to Peters to clear Flynn&rsquo;s name, following a twisted trail that surprisingly leads to the set of The Maltese Falcon, involving Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, and Sydney Greenstreet. As real-life PI Toby Peters meets Bogie&rsquo;s Sam Spade, he doesn&rsquo;t fall prey to being star-struck. But he may still fall prey to a killer. &ldquo;If you like your mysteries Sam Spade tough, with tongue in cheek and a touch of the theatrical, then the Toby Peters series is just your ticket.&rdquo; &mdash;Houston Chronicle</div>

Bullet for a Star

<div>In this mystery introducing a hard-boiled Soviet police inspector, &ldquo;Kaminsky gets Russia right&rdquo; (Ed McBain). Aleksander Granovsky has dedicated his life to exposing the brutality of the Russian penal system. In two days he will be tried for the crime of smuggling essays to the West. It is a show trial, and there is no doubt he will be convicted and executed, yet before he dies, he intends to tell the truth one more time. But this is Moscow, where death is never heroic. While writing his final speech in his government flat, Granovsky is surprised by an assassin, who pierces his heart with the point of a rusty scythe. The case is given to Porfiry Rostnikov, a veteran Moscow police inspector with a knack for navigating the labyrinths of Soviet bureaucracy. A bruising bear of a man, whose love of weightlifting and American pizza has left him as squat and powerful as a .38 bullet, Rostnikov may be the toughest cop in Moscow. This winter, his challenge is not just to find the killer, but to survive the investigation, as every question he asks takes him closer to exposing the dark heart of the KGB. A Cold War&ndash;era hero, Porfiry Rostnikov is &ldquo;quite simply the best cop to come out of the Soviet Union since Martin Cruz Smith&rsquo;s Arkady Renko in Gorky Park.&rdquo; (San Francisco Examiner) </div>

Death of a Dissident

<div>Time is running out for surrealist painter Salvador Dal&iacute; and a 1940s Hollywood PI: &ldquo;Fast-paced, well-plotted, consistently funny&rdquo; (The Philadelphia Inquirer). Talk about surreal! An ax-wielding monk hacks at a door, while on the other side private detective Toby Peters is running as fast as his recently broken leg will allow, alongside Salvador Dal&iacute;, dressed in a rabbit suit, repeatedly muttering &ldquo;grasshoppers&rdquo; as they try to make their escape. It all started when Dal&iacute; hired a gang of burglars to steal three of his own paintings&mdash;a publicity stunt that spiraled out of control when the thieves refused to give the missing masterpieces back. Dal&iacute; hired Peters to find the artwork, but now it seems the pair may have painted themselves into a corner. &ldquo;The flamboyant prankster-artist [Dal&iacute;] holds his own among the hero&rsquo;s circle of zany friends in Mr. Kaminsky&rsquo;s Technicolor fantasy of 1940&rsquo;s Hollywood.&rdquo; &mdash;The New York Times &ldquo;Once again Kaminsky mixes the real&mdash;in this case the surreal&mdash;with the fictional for a quick-paced, clever revisionist Hollywood romp.&rdquo; &mdash;Publishers Weekly</div>

The Melting Clock

<div>A forties Hollywood PI does not forsake Gary Cooper: &ldquo;Like all of Toby [Peters&rsquo;s] adventures, High Midnight is high entertainment&rdquo; (The Cincinnati Post). When laconic leading man Gary Cooper needs a detective, he does the smart thing and hires Toby Peters, sleuth to the stars. But the man he finds in Peters&rsquo;s office isn&rsquo;t the famously discreet private eye&mdash;it&rsquo;s the dentist who shares his office, who&rsquo;s always had a fantasy of playing gumshoe, and happily agrees to take care of Cooper&rsquo;s blackmail problem. Impersonating Peters, the dentist bungles the case disastrously, and setting it right will be like pulling teeth. Cooper is in trouble with a Chicago gangster named Lombardi, who&rsquo;s come to Los Angeles intending to set himself up as the cold cuts king of California. Thanks to the dentist&rsquo;s meddling, he wants the actor dead. When Cooper hightails it with his old drinking buddy Ernest Hemingway, it&rsquo;s up to Peters to avoid a showdown. High Midnight shows once again how Edgar Award winner Stuart M. Kaminsky &ldquo;has a delightfully original mind enriching&mdash;rather than just borrowing from&mdash;an old literary form&rdquo; (Los Angeles Times).</div>

High Midnight

<div>Gen. Douglas MacArthur enlists the help of a discreet private detective in &ldquo;one of the sprightliest of the [Toby Peters] series&rdquo; (Time). It&rsquo;s September 1942, and Gen. Douglas MacArthur believes he&rsquo;s got what it takes to win the war in the Pacific&mdash;but he&rsquo;s got a personal problem to take care of first. An aide has run off with his war chest, his donor list, and a handful of embarrassing private letters: a haul that would make the general a perfect target for blackmail and derail the post-war presidential run he&rsquo;s planning. This is one battle he can&rsquo;t afford to lose. So the general enlists Det. Toby Peters, who has built a reputation for discretion among Hollywood&rsquo;s elite, not to mention the White House. Forming a surprising alliance with former Pinkerton agent and legendary crime novelist, Dashiell Hammett, Peters follows the trail to Angel Springs, California, and a mysterious millionaire who&rsquo;s definitely no angel. In protecting the general from blackmail, Peters hopes to avoid paying the ultimate price himself. Edgar Award winner Stuart M. Kaminsky &ldquo;has a delightfully original mind enriching&mdash;rather than just borrowing from&mdash;an old literary form&rdquo; (Los Angeles Times).</div>

Buried Caesars

<div>In the Edgar Award&ndash;winning crime series featuring a veteran Moscow cop, &ldquo;Kaminsky evokes Russian life like a born Muscovite&rdquo; (The Philadelphia Inquirer). During the widespread corruption of the Yeltsin era, violent crime has risen in Moscow by 200 to 300 percent, keeping Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov and his team at the Office of Special Investigation busier than ever. So it&rsquo;s fortunate that having his bad leg amputated six months ago and replaced by a prosthetic limb has not slowed down the veteran Moscow cop one bit. Now he&rsquo;s investigating a hate-fueled crime wave, as a bloodthirsty gunman wages a campaign to systematically exterminate the city&rsquo;s Jews. At the same time, a knife-wielding rapist is running rampant. Despite the urgent demand to end the mayhem, the inspector finds himself most intrigued by a centuries-old mystery concerning a murdered baroness and a priceless golden wolf statue that has been missing since 1862. Stuart Kaminsky&rsquo;s long-running, Edgar Award&ndash;winning series has seen his intensely moral Moscow police inspector through the turbulence of several regimes, and always &ldquo;Kaminsky takes care not to rob his beleaguered cops of their human core&rdquo; (The New York Times).</div>

Tarnished Icons

<div>In this &ldquo;marvelously entertaining&rdquo; 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&rsquo;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&rsquo;t explain what Judy Garland is doing there&mdash;or why she finds a Munchkin in full costume, lying facedown with a knife buried in his back. To avoid even a whiff of scandal and protect Judy&rsquo;s wholesome image, the studio boss hires Toby Peters, a Hollywood private detective with a reputation for discretion. But as Peters quickly learns, the real threat to Miss Garland isn&rsquo;t the tabloids&mdash;it&rsquo;s the psychopathic killer who stalks the back lot and plans to kill the young actress next. In addition to the murder mystery swirling around Judy Garland, the second Toby Peters novel features cameos from &ldquo;Clark Gable and Raymond Chandler [who] give an assist in this imaginative mystery recreated from yesterday&rsquo;s movie-land&rdquo; (The Plain Dealer, Cleveland).</div>

Murder on the Yellow Brick Road

<div>It doesn&rsquo;t take a genius to see Albert Einstein&rsquo;s life is in danger, but it will take a hard-headed Hollywood PI to save him. It&rsquo;s all relative. It&rsquo;s April 1942, the world is at war, and LA private detective Toby Peters has been summoned to Princeton, New Jersey, to deal with a situation of the utmost gravity&mdash;the world&rsquo;s greatest physicist is being threatened. Blackmailers claim to have evidence that Albert Einstein has been passing nuclear secrets to Russia, and Nazi assassins want to do away with one of the most famous opponents of Hitler&rsquo;s rule. Sounds like a formula for disaster. Peters is used to dealing with Hollywood&rsquo;s elite&mdash;not exactly a brain trust&mdash;but the East Coast is a new beat for him. Soon he&rsquo;s swept up in some serious Manhattan mayhem, trying to keep Einstein from harm but also trying to stay alive himself. Incorporating cameos from Paul Robeson and Frank Sinatra, Edgar Award&ndash;winning author Stuart M. Kaminsky &ldquo;has such a good time writing, and he so loves the period, that the reader is swept along willy-nilly&rdquo; (TheNew York Times Book Review).</div>

Smart Moves

<div>In this &ldquo;lively noir mystery,&rdquo; a 1940s Hollywood private eye tries to clear heavyweight champ Joe Louis and corner a killer (Library Journal). Joe Louis may be the heavyweight champ of the world, but private detective Toby Peters is pretty sure he&rsquo;s not a cold-blooded killer. Pretty sure, because Peters has just found the boxer standing over a man on the beach who&rsquo;s clearly been beaten to death. Louis claims he was just out for a run, but it doesn&rsquo;t look good. Offering his services on the spot, Peters joins the champ&rsquo;s corner. The corpse isn&rsquo;t just anyone. He happens to be Peters&rsquo;s ex-wife&rsquo;s new husband, the one she just hired him to find. Well, he found him. As the detective begins to investigate, he discovers the victim had lately taken an interest in the boxing world, which only further complicates matters. To clear the Louis, Peters will need to go a few rounds with a killer who won&rsquo;t be pulling any punches. The Edgar Award winner once again delivers a TKO in the hard-boiled detective genre with a tale Library Journal calls &ldquo;vintage Kaminsky.&rdquo;</div>

Down for the Count

<div>In a fun series with &ldquo;shades of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett,&rdquo; a 1940s PI must find out who&rsquo;s gunning for Peter Lorre (TheSan Diego Union-Tribune). Scaly-voiced and bug-eyed actor Peter Lorre has become one of the most recognizable faces in Hollywood, especially after appearing in the Sam Spade crime drama, The Maltese Falcon, last year. Yet Hollywood PI Toby Peters still has to contend with his landlady believing the star of Think Fast, Mr. Moto, is Japanese. Whether playing an Asian detective or a weaselly villain, one role Lorre will probably never get is romantic lead&mdash;except apparently in real life. Because the distraught dentist who shares offices with Peters insists his wife has run off with Peter Lorre and begs the detective to find her. As it turns out, the boyfriend in question is a Peter Lorre impersonator&mdash;perhaps an even more bizarre romantic choice. But by the time Peters finds him, the mimic is doing a terrific imitation of a corpse. The bullet was meant for the real Lorre, who has just become the gumshoe&rsquo;s client&mdash;whether he likes it or not. &ldquo;If you like your mysteries Sam Spade tough, with tongue-in-cheek and a touch of the theatrical, then the Toby Peters series is just your ticket.&rdquo; &mdash;Houston Chronicle</div>

Think Fast, Mr. Peters

<div>Hired as a bodyguard for diva Bette Davis, this wisecracking Hollywood PI better fasten his seat belt, it&rsquo;s going to be a bumpy night. Bette Davis has three words to describe her hotel hideaway: &ldquo;What a dump!&rdquo; After two days locked in a rented room with the acid-tongued actress, private eye Toby Peters is starting to feel like he&rsquo;s her husband&mdash;instead of Arthur Farnsworth&mdash;and he wants a divorce. The diva&rsquo;s real hubby&mdash;an aeronautics engineer with a head full of government secrets and a gang of blackmailers on his trail&mdash;has hired Peters to keep Bette safe from kidnappers. But when thugs burst through the hotel room door, it&rsquo;s almost a relief. Almost . . . Because Peters still has a job to do. And to rescue the snatched star, he needs to crack a Nazi spy ring while at the same time keeping a bit of indiscreet evidence involving Bette and Howard Hughes from falling into the wrong hands . . . &ldquo;For anyone with a taste for old Hollywood B-movie mysteries, Edgar winner [Stuart M.] Kaminsky offers plenty of nostalgic fun&rdquo; in the Toby Peters mysteries. &ldquo;The tone is light, the pace brisk, the tongue firmly in cheek&rdquo; (Publishers Weekly).</div>

The Devil Met a Lady

<div>This thrilling crime novel features &ldquo;the best cop to come out of the Soviet Union since Martin Cruz Smith&rsquo;s Arkady Renko&rdquo; (San Francisco Examiner). After a lifetime in service to the Soviet Union, police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov may have found a way out. A high-profile homicide leads him to a cache of documents packed full of incriminating Kremlin gossip, which he uses as a bargaining chip to secure exit visas for himself and his Jewish wife. But just before the deal is concluded, Brezhnev&rsquo;s death sends the nation into turmoil, and makes escape impossible. His career derailed, the veteran cop is reduced to investigating penny-ante murders&mdash;one of which may lead somewhere very big indeed. An elderly Jewish man is shot to death in his bathtub by killers who steal nothing but a worthless brass candlestick. And as the brutal Moscow summer wears on, the police find themselves the targets of car thieves and snipers. With the help of his two faithful lieutenants, Karpo and Tkach, Rostnikov needs to find a way to solve these cases and salvage his good name&mdash;if it doesn&rsquo;t cost him his life. The Edgar Award&ndash;winning Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov series is one more reason why New York Times&ndash;bestselling author Tony Hillerman says, &ldquo;Never miss a Kaminsky book.&rdquo;</div>

Red Chameleon

<div>Goodness has nothing to do with it as a hard-luck private eye in 1940s Hollywood takes a case for legendary silver screen sex symbol Mae West. In the early days of talking pictures, the greatest sex symbol in Hollywood was the platinum-blonde bad girl Mae West. Naughty and gorgeous with a razor-sharp wit, West wrote her own material and controlled her own image&mdash;until the censors came in and outlawed the racy repartee that made her famous. By the forties, her star has faded and she&rsquo;s banking everything on a scandalous memoir that she hopes will set the stage for a comeback. When the only copy is stolen, she calls in a favor from an old beau&mdash;the brother of wisecracking PI Toby Peters. When Mae West asks, &ldquo;Why don&rsquo;t you come up sometime and see me?&rdquo; you don&rsquo;t say no. Peters arrives at a party at West&rsquo;s house, where every guest is a man dressed as the woman herself&mdash;and one of them may be the thief who stole the manuscript. But before he can tear off the culprit&rsquo;s wig, Peters finds that this is about more than theft. The crook wants to destroy Mae West, and he has murder on his mind. The star of Edgar Award winner Stuart M. Kaminsky&rsquo;s fun forties private eye series, &ldquo;Peters is a good guy with a sense of humor, and every appearance he makes is a welcome one&rdquo; (Booklist).</div>

He Done Her Wrong

<div>&ldquo;Edgar winner Kaminsky offers plenty of nostalgic fun&rdquo; as Hollywood PI Toby Peters teams up with Cary Grant in this World War II&ndash;era spy romp (Publishers Weekly). Since the start of World War II, Cary Grant has been working undercover in Hollywood as a spy for the British crown. When a ring of Nazi sympathizers gets wise, they start blackmailing the debonair leading man. Now Grant has hired Toby Peters to handle the payoff. But when the blackmailer is killed, the rumpled detective and the suave movie star are thrust into a complex plot of murder, money, and Nazi spies, leading to a literal cliffhanger . . . &ldquo;For anyone with a taste for old Hollywood B-movie mysteries, Edgar winner Kaminsky offers plenty of nostalgic fun in his 22nd book to feature good-natured, unprepossessing sleuth Toby Peters . . . Toby and the acrobatic Grant at his lithe best make an appealing team. The tone is light, the pace brisk, the tongue firmly in cheek.&rdquo; &mdash;Publishers Weekly</div>

To Catch a Spy

<div>The final Toby Peters Hollywood whodunit from the Edgar Award&ndash;winning author is &ldquo;a marvelous magic trick of a mystery&rdquo; featuring Harry Blackstone (Booklist, starred review). When an anonymous rival demands that master illusionist Harry Blackstone reveal his secrets on stage or die, the magician hires Toby Peters and his brother, ex-cop Phil Pevsner, to run security for his show at the famous Pantages Theater in Hollywood. Of course, Peters doesn&rsquo;t expect the job to include replacing a showgirl for Blackstone&rsquo;s show-stopping sawing-a-woman-in-half trick after the saboteur has stolen the blade. Peters&rsquo;s brief career in magic is only the first surprise as a blackmailing con man turns up shot in a dressing room backstage and one of Blackstone&rsquo;s competitors ends up dead at a testimonial dinner. With &ldquo;The Great Blackstone&rdquo; now a murder suspect, the sleuth will need to pull a rabbit out of a hat to solve this mystery . . .</div>

Now You See It

<div>PI Toby Peters comes to the aid of Charlie Chaplin when the Little Tramp becomes a big target in this &ldquo;ingenious&rdquo; mystery from the Edgar Award winner (Kirkus Reviews). In 1943, Charlie Chaplin is far from the most popular man in America. His communist sympathies and romantic indiscretions with young women have enraged everyone from right-wing radicals and the Ku Klux Klan to furious fathers. But when a knife-wielding intruder breaks into his house one night, the maniac isn&rsquo;t talking politics. He demands Chaplin stop making his latest black comedy about a man who murders wealthy women for their money&mdash;and specifically tells him to stay away from one Fiona Sullivan. Who? Chaplin turns to the shamus to the stars, Toby Peters, to keep him from harm and apprehend his nocturnal visitor. Peters&rsquo;s lead on Fiona comes from a most unlikely source&mdash;his landlady, Mrs. Irene Plaut, knows the woman. Rallying his crew of diminutive Gunther Wherthman, wrestler Jeremy Butler, and dentist Sheldon Minck, Toby&rsquo;s determined to catch the midnight madman before Chaplin is silenced forever. In the twenty-first book in his long-running series, the Edgar Award&ndash;winning author offers an &ldquo;ingenious twist on the old serial killer chestnut, with the usual manic Peters m&eacute;nage obbligato&rdquo; (Kirkus Reviews).</div>

A Few Minutes Past Midnight

<div>&ldquo;A page-turning romp&rdquo; from the Edgar Award&ndash;winning author featuring a nutty dentist, a killer crossbow, and Joan Crawford in 1940s Hollywood (Booklist, starred review). Mildred Minck is an unremarkable woman&mdash;until one tragic night in June 1944 when she becomes the first citizen of Los Angeles to be murdered by crossbow. The prime suspect is her husband, dentist Sheldon Minck, who&rsquo;s found standing over her body with the weapon in hand, raving that only Joan Crawford can identify the killer. It seems like a natural insanity defense, but Sheldon wants his neighbor, private investigator Toby Peters, to prove his innocence. The dentist is telling the truth about one thing: Joan Crawford was there. The steely silver screen beauty is in the middle of a comeback, about to star in a film noir based on a James M. Cain novel, and insists Peters keep her name out of the papers. In exchange, the glamorous eyewitness points the sleuth toward the Survivors of the Future, a band of crackpot survivalists that the dentist was hoping to join. Sheldon&rsquo;s new friends want him sprung, but only because they want him dead . . . With its &ldquo;irresistible&rdquo; title, Edgar Award winner Stuart M. Kaminsky&rsquo;s penultimate Toby Peters mystery shines a spotlight on the legendary screen diva as well as one of the favorite supporting characters of the series (The Washington Post).</div>

Mildred Pierced

<div>The stakes are life and death when Bela Lugosi is threatened in this &ldquo;affectionate parody of the hard-boiled private-eye&rdquo; genre (The New York Times). 1942: In the basement of a crumbling Los Angeles movie palace, five vampires crowd around Bela Lugosi. They should not frighten the fading horror icon, who found worldwide fame as Dracula, for these are only wannabes&mdash;diehard fans who get their kicks dressing up as bloodsuckers. But Lugosi is terrified, because he knows that one of these crackpots has been making threats against his life. Their fangs may be plastic, but their lethal intentions are all too real. For protection, Lugosi hires Hollywood private eye Toby Peters, who&rsquo;s splitting his time between this case and a job for his old employers: the Warner brothers. A Hollywood murder has been linked to one of the studio&rsquo;s star screenwriters: the brilliant novelist and violent drunk, William Faulkner. To his horror, Peters finds a connection between the two cases. To get Faulkner off the hook, he&rsquo;ll have to find out who wants to close the coffin lid on Dracula. With &ldquo;shades of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett&rdquo; Edgar Award&ndash;winning author Stuart Kaminsky&rsquo;s 1940s Hollywood PI is once again cracking wise and saving celebrities from psychos (The San Diego Union-Tribune).</div>

Never Cross a Vampire

<div>On the eve of Pearl Harbor, Howard Hughes hires Hollywood gumshoe Toby Peters to find stolen blueprints in the &ldquo;marvelously entertaining&rdquo; series (Newsday). Millionaire Howard Hughes likes his secrets. He likes to keep them&mdash;and he definitely doesn&rsquo;t like having them stolen. Hollywood PI Toby Peters has a rep for being discreet. So when the film tycoon and aviation magnate needs a detective to very privately investigate the theft of top-secret blueprints taken from his home during one of his fabulous parties, he summons Peters. But what starts as counter-espionage intrigue turns into a triple murder, and Peters soon finds himself bait for a killer. As America is pulled into World War II, Peters is just trying to stay alive as a gunman chases him through a deserted television soundstage. With help from some unlikely allies&mdash;including Basil Rathbone, the silver screen&rsquo;s Sherlock Holmes, and gangster/patriot Bugsy Siegel&mdash;Peters is determined to dodge the bullets long enough to recover the blueprints before they fall into the wrong hands. The Chicago Sun-Times calls the Toby Peters mysteries &ldquo;entertainment at its best&rdquo; as Edgar Award&ndash;winning author Stuart Kaminsky takes readers on a rollicking tour of Hollywood in the forties.</div>

The Howard Hughes Affair

<div>As a hard-boiled Hollywood PI enlists Al Capone&rsquo;s help to save the Marx Brothers, Kaminsky &ldquo;makes the totally wacky possible&rdquo; (The Washington Post). It&rsquo;s 1941 and the Marx Brothers&rsquo; first movie for MGM, Go West, has the country in stitches. But now Chico Marx is worried he&rsquo;s going to need stitches when he receives a severed ear in the mail&mdash;a simple message from a Chicago bookie who wants $120,000, or else. Chico is baffled because, although he loves to gamble, he&rsquo;s never made a bet in Chicago. Desperate, he turns to the king of Hollywood, Louis B. Mayer, who puts in a call to Toby Peters. A Hollywood private detective who&rsquo;s proven himself adept at keeping scandals out of the tabloids, Peters flies to Florida for an interview with Al Capone, deposed lord of the Chicago underworld. The retired bootlegger&rsquo;s mind has gone soft, and he doesn&rsquo;t know anything about Chico&rsquo;s bookie, but he suggests Peters speak to his brother. With Scarface&rsquo;s good word as an introduction, the PI heads to Chicago. But it will take more than a good sense of humor to keep Groucho, Harpo, and especially Chico from getting axed. Edgar Award&ndash;winner Stuart Kaminsky&rsquo;s &ldquo;Toby Peters series was a delight. They were written with more than a dash of humor and featured a variety of improbable real-life characters, ranging from the Marx Brothers to Judy Garland&rdquo; (Library Journal).</div>

You Bet Your Life

<div>Someone&rsquo;s gunning for John Wayne in this &ldquo;well-plotted&rdquo; mystery set in 1940s Hollywood featuring a wisecracking private eye (Publishers Weekly). Something about Lewis Vance&rsquo;s story doesn&rsquo;t add up. The guy claims to be John Wayne&rsquo;s stand-in, and he&rsquo;s called Det. Toby Peters about a possible job involving the star. But when Peters meets him in a seedy hotel room, Vance slips him a mickey. After Peters comes to, his head pounding, he sees the real John Wayne pointing a .38 at him. Vance was not exactly a dead ringer for the Duke&mdash;but he is dead, lying on the hotel bed with a bullet hole drilled in his forehead. And it&rsquo;s a dead heat as to who&rsquo;s more confused&mdash;the gumshoe or the movie star. On screen no one gets the drop on the Duke, but in real life someone&rsquo;s trying to kill him. Wayne hires Peters to get to the bottom of things, and soon he&rsquo;s tangled up in a twisted conspiracy that also involves a dubious desk clerk named Teddy Spaghetti, the Russians, and none other than the Little Tramp himself, Charlie Chaplin. &ldquo;As in the other entries in this series, Kaminsky&rsquo;s use of period detail and his appealing renderings of real-life celebrities provide the strongest recommendations for this well-plotted mystery.&rdquo; &mdash;Publishers Weekly</div>

The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance

<div>This &ldquo;enjoyable lark&rdquo; is a road-trip mystery with an old Hollywood backdrop, starring PI Toby Peters and the great comic W. C. Fields (Library Journal). Under names like Otis J. Raisincluster, Quigley E. Sneersight, and Cormorant Beecham III, W. C. Fields squirreled away nearly a million dollars in banks across the country during his vaudeville days&mdash;before he became one of the silver screen&rsquo;s most recognizable funnymen. But it&rsquo;s no laughing matter when a burglar has the audacity to rob him blind, stealing his bankbooks and cleaning out his accounts. Steaming, the comedian hires Hollywood private investigator Toby Peters to track down the missing dough and protect what remains of his nest egg. On a cross-country road trip through small-town 1940s America, a frequently inebriated Fields and a frequently exasperated Peters encounter complications in the form of the Amish, John Barrymore, and the Ku Klux Klan. But can they catch their elusive quarry&mdash;Lester O. Hipnoodle? &ldquo;Even on the printed page . . . Fields&rsquo; nasal rap seems to rise up and envelop you&rdquo; in the Edgar Award&ndash;winning author&rsquo;s &ldquo;mesmerizing&rdquo; comic mystery (Chicago Sun-Times).</div>

A Fatal Glass of Beer

<div>A 1940s Hollywood gumshoe heads to San Francisco to foil a very real phantom of the opera in this &ldquo;believable and entertaining&rdquo; mystery (Publishers Weekly). 1942 is a dangerous year to stage Madama Butterfly. Although Puccini&rsquo;s masterpiece is a perennial favorite of the San Francisco opera crowd, its sympathetic depiction of a Japanese girl causes tension a year after Pearl Harbor. Newspaper editorialists rage against the production, opera buffs picket the theater, and a note appears nailed to the house door, threatening violence against cast and crew. But someone is doing more than making idle threats&mdash;a self-styled phantom of the opera. When a workman on the opera house renovation is killed, the maestro, Leopold Stokowski, the conductor who starred in Disney&rsquo;s Fantasia, calls Hollywood PI Toby Peters to catch a madman. With two days to go before opening night, the attacks are building to a crescendo. As Peters hunts for the phantom, he falls for one of the company starlets. But they must tread lightly, or face a finale far more tragic than anything dreamed of by Puccini. &ldquo;Hardly a pause separates the frightful, madly comic and nostalgic incidents made believable and entertaining in Kaminsky&rsquo;s artful handling&rdquo; (Publishers Weekly).</div>

Poor Butterfly

<div>A Soviet cop stars in this novel of &ldquo;sweaty-palmed suspense . . . Equal parts likeable characters and believable dangers&rdquo; (The Washington Post Book World). The Moscow Film Festival is in town, and the elite artists of the East and West have convened at the legendary Metropole Hotel to drink, gossip, and flirt. But the party is about to come crashing down. Four men&mdash;one American, one Japanese, and two Russians&mdash;will all be dead by morning, poisoned. To keep the killings under wraps, the Kremlin hands the investigation over to the famously discreet police investigator Porfiry Rostnikov. A hard-boiled cop with more than three decades&rsquo; experience navigating the deadly jungle of the Soviet bureaucracy, Rostnikov is about to find himself both in the international spotlight and in the crosshairs of a terrorist, who is targeting foreigners to embarrass the Soviet state and will happily sacrifice any Russian who gets in the way. This Edgar Award&ndash;nominated follow-up to Death of a Dissident confirms Stuart Kaminsky&rsquo;s status as &ldquo;the Ed McBain of Mother Russia&rdquo; (Kirkus Reviews).</div>

Black Knight in Red Square

<div>Frankly, a killer doesn&rsquo;t give a damn about offing Clark Gable&mdash;or Toby Peters&mdash;in this &ldquo;fast-paced and colorful addition to a very successful series&rdquo; (Publishers Weekly). On December 10, 1938, Atlanta burned again. In the back lot at David O. Selznick&rsquo;s studio, sets from a dozen old pictures were pushed together and set ablaze 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 Confederate extras in line. When the fire was over, he found one of them dead, impaled on his own sword. Five years later, Peters scratches out a living as a private detective for Hollywood&rsquo;s best known stars. Now it&rsquo;s Clark Gable who needs his help. He&rsquo;s been getting death threats. On the back of a cryptic poem, the sleuth finds a list of people on scene the night the extra died. Two are already dead, and the rest are next. Sure enough, one of those marked for death is Gable. The other is Toby Peters . . . &ldquo;Nostalgic readers with a yen for the good old days . . . will find Kaminsky&rsquo;s story entertaining, clever, eminently readable, and chock-full of snippets from Hollywood&rsquo;s Golden Age.&rdquo; &mdash;Booklist</div>

Tomorrow Is Another Day

<div>A PI performs some fancy footwork to protect Fred Astaire as &ldquo;Edgar winner Kaminsky effortlessly choreographs Hollywood history . . . and dirty doings&rdquo; (Publishers Weekly). Sometimes fools must step in where Fred Astaire fears to tap. Luna Martin, the moll of a well-known Los Angeles gangster nicknamed &ldquo;Fingers&rdquo; (because he likes to cut them off), has demanded dance lessons from Hollywood&rsquo;s finest hoofer&mdash;and whatever Luna wants, Luna gets. To sidestep the flirtations of the lead-footed lady, Astaire hires private investigator Toby Peters to pose as a dance instructor and take over the lessons. But when someone cuts in and cuts Luna&rsquo;s throat, the grieving gangster makes Peters an offer he can&rsquo;t refuse: Find the killer&mdash;or go from having two left feet to one foot in the grave. Now, instead of punishing the parquet, the silver screen&rsquo;s most famous song-and-dance man is pounding the pavement with his new partner&mdash;a rumpled, middle-aged gumshoe who just wants to live to shuffle through another day . . .</div>

Dancing in the Dark

<div>Tension runs high as a Moscow cop investigates murder under the big top&mdash;from the Edgar Award&ndash;winning &ldquo;Ed McBain of Mother Russia&rdquo; (Kirkus Reviews). Porfiry Rostnikov was one of the top detectives in Moscow&mdash;until he crossed the KGB. On the orders of the secret service, this bulldog cop is busted down to the minor crimes unit, where his talents are utterly wasted. When a drunk climbs the statue of Nikolai Gogol in Arbat Square and threatens to kill himself, Rostnikov tries to talk the man down. But with a perfect somersault, acrobat Valerian Duznetzov leaps from the statue&mdash;the final jump of a storied career. Across town, Duznetzov&rsquo;s partner, Oleg, practices his trapeze routine high above the circus floor. After letting go of the bars and going into a perfect double flip, Oleg falls, expecting the net to catch him. But the net has been sabotaged, and Oleg dies. As Rostnikov digs into this strange pair of deaths, he finds dark secrets inside the Moscow circus&mdash;secrets sure to grab the attention of his old friends at the KGB. &ldquo;The shrewd, temperate Inspector Rostnikov . . . himself is like an acrobat on the high wire without a net, a target of both his jealous supervisor and the unknown murderer . . . This witty, intricate thriller reaches a suspenseful finale in the center ring under the Moscow Circus Big Top.&rdquo; &mdash;Publishers Weekly</div>

Apple Books

A Fine Red Rain

<div>A veteran Chicago cop who&rsquo;s also a mensch, &ldquo;Lieberman is endearing, wise in his crochets, weary with his wisdom&rdquo; (The Washington Post Book World). Thirty-three years ago, Connie Gower pulled a gun in a synagogue. He had come to avenge his brother, a two-bit hoodlum who&rsquo;d been killed in a shootout with a young cop named Abe Lieberman. But Lieberman outsmarted him, and put Gower in jail. After serving his time, for the next few decades Gower bounced around the Chicago underworld, making a name for himself as a second-rate mob enforcer. Fate is a funny thing. When Gower gets arrested in Yuma, Arizona, it&rsquo;s an aged Abe Lieberman who goes to bring him home, leaving his longtime partner Bill Hanrahan back in the windy city to put up with the hot air of his racist substitute. Handcuffed to each other, Lieberman and his prisoner are about to board the plane when a geriatric janitor shuffles towards them and shoots Gower dead. Connie Gower was scum, but killing him is still murder, and Lieberman is determined to find out who ordered the hit&mdash;and why. Edgar Award winner Stuart M. Kaminsky&rsquo;s The Last Dark Place is &ldquo;an entertaining crime novel that should send new readers in search of its predecessors&rdquo; (Publishers Weekly).</div>

The Last Dark Place

<div>&ldquo;Never miss a Kaminsky book, and be especially sure not to miss Death of a Russian Priest.&rdquo; &mdash;Tony Hillerman, New York Times&ndash;bestselling author In the darkest hours of communist rule, Father Merhum fought to protect the sanctity of the Orthodox Church. Now the Soviet Union is gone, but the bureaucracy survives, and within it lurk men who would do anything to undermine the fragile new Russian democracy. Father Merhum is on his way to Moscow to denounce those traitors when he is struck with an ax and killed. As police inspectors Porfiry Rostnikov and Emil Karpo dig into the past of this celebrated village priest, they uncover strange church secrets and a conspiracy to carry the vile corruption of the former regime on into the twenty-first century. But if they don&rsquo;t watch their steps, someone may need to say the last rites for them. With the Edgar Award&ndash;winning Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov series, &ldquo;Stuart Kaminsky evokes Russian life like a born Muscovite. . . . Don&rsquo;t miss this one. It&rsquo;s even better than his Edgar-winning A Cold Red Sunrise.&rdquo; &mdash;The Philadelphia Inquirer &ldquo;Kaminsky moves closer to becoming the Ed McBain of Mother Russia . . . The usual strengths of the series&mdash;ingenious plotting, solid police procedure, and Rostnikov&rsquo;s shrewdly perceptive presence&mdash;are joined here by casually effective glimpses of the old Soviet Union in chancy transition. It all adds up to Rostnikov&rsquo;s best outing since A Cold Red Sunrise.&rdquo; &mdash;Kirkus Reviews</div>

Death of a Russian Priest

<div>A &ldquo;chilling . . . stunning thriller&rdquo; from the Edgar Award&ndash;winning author of Exercise in Terror (Booklist). It is 1957, and Jean Kaiser is pretending to sleep. When her parents go to bed, she&rsquo;ll turn her radio on low, and groove to Elvis. But from her parents&rsquo; room, she hears something strange&mdash;her mother calling her name in a choking, terrified voice so chilling that Jean assumes it can&rsquo;t be real, and wills herself to sleep. When she awakens in the morning, the nightmare has come true&mdash;a killer has slaughtered her parents in their bed. More than two decades later, Jean has done her best to move past her childhood trauma, parlaying a degree in psychology into a position as the host of a radio call-in show. One night, an anonymous caller shakes her to the core when he brings up details that remind her of her parents&rsquo; murder. When Jean and her daughter, Angie, get home, they find their pet parakeet crushed to death over Jean&rsquo;s bed. Her parents&rsquo; killer has reemerged ready to tie up loose ends. The nightmare never ended, and now Jean and Angie must fight&mdash;or die.</div>

When the Dark Man Calls

<div>This taut thriller from the Edgar Award&ndash;winning author of When the Dark Man Calls &ldquo;builds with great tension to a shocking conclusion&rdquo; (Chicago Tribune). On a hot summer afternoon, Maureen sits with her two children in the family car, anxiously waiting for her husband David. There are two men lurking nearby&mdash;a couple of drunks who followed them here from the supermarket&mdash;and they make Maureen nervous. As David is walking back to the car, the drunks take a baseball bat to his skull. Maureen can do nothing but try to shield their little boy and girl as their father is murdered before their eyes. Eight years later, Maureen makes a living as an exercise instructor and all-around fitness freak, a rigorously disciplined lifestyle that has helped her family get past the horror of David&rsquo;s murder. But one day, the killers call to taunt her, and say they are not finished tormenting her family. They are coming for Maureen, and no matter how fast she runs, she cannot escape . . .</div>

Exercise in Terror

<div>Two Chicago cops need to defuse an explosive situation in this &ldquo;tightly plotted&rdquo; police procedural (Chicago Tribune). After killing his wife and her lover, an unhinged and heavily armed Chicago cop named Bernie Shepard barricades himself at the top of a high-rise apartment building and sends a message to the police: meet his demands, or he&rsquo;ll detonate enough explosives to blow the whole block sky high. If it&rsquo;s a choice between chewing the fat at his brother Maish&rsquo;s deli or hunting down armed lunatics, world-weary veteran cop Abe Lieberman knows where he stands. But no one&rsquo;s giving him a choice. It&rsquo;s up to Lieberman and his longtime partner, Bill Hanrahan&mdash;aka the Rabbi and Father Murphy&mdash;to play Bernie&rsquo;s game, betting their lives on a madman&rsquo;s whim. With a crazed cop holding &ldquo;enough explosives to blow the North Side of Chicago to kingdom come . . . Kaminsky mines plenty of suspense&rdquo; (The New York Times Book Review).</div>

Lieberman's Choice

<div>An Edgar Award&ndash;winning author steals the show again in &ldquo;a beautifully calibrated mix of wit, suspense, and quiet honesty&rdquo; (The Washington Post Book World). It should have been an easy score&mdash;a suburban house on a quiet cul-de-sac, with the owners scheduled to be gone all night. But career burglar George Patniks has chosen the wrong time to go breaking and entering, because tonight Harvey Rozier will murder his wife. Patniks is the only witness to the brutal killing, but of course he can&rsquo;t go to the police. Wise, world-weary Homicide Det. Abe Lieberman has been lied to a lot in his long career on the Chicago police force. Rozier&rsquo;s claim of a robbery-gone-wrong just doesn&rsquo;t add up, but Lieberman needs hard evidence to confirm his gut instinct. Along with his partner, Bill Hanrahan, Lieberman is looking for a break&mdash;and he just might get one . . . if the killer doesn&rsquo;t catch the thief first. &ldquo;Outstanding . . . Another stellar performance, alight with menace and compassion.&rdquo; &mdash;Kirkus Reviews (starred review)</div>

Lieberman's Thief

<div>This Chicago cop drama is &ldquo;jam-packed with the stuff of good crime fiction&mdash;character, style, place, recognizable human conflict&rdquo; (The Washington Post). When the wife of a mob witness is killed and his teenage son is kidnapped, the ransom isn&rsquo;t cash&mdash;it&rsquo;s his life. The dead can&rsquo;t testify. If the witness kills himself, the mob will let his son live. Now veteran cops Abe Lieberman and Bill Hanrahan need to protect their witness from himself while they turn Chicago&rsquo;s gangland upside down to save the kid. It doesn&rsquo;t help that Hanrahan is newly sober in AA, battling drink urges and the guilt of recently losing another informant. Lieberman has seen his partner at his worst with the booze and always had his back. But now both their backs are against the wall, and they&rsquo;ll need to rely on each other and make some hard choices to set this one right. Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America and Edgar Award Winner Stuart M. Kaminsky &ldquo;has the pro&rsquo;s knack of combining quirky people, succinct descriptions, an eye for detail, and dark humor to produce entertainment at its best&rdquo; (Chicago Sun-Times).</div>

The Big Silence

<div>With his Edgar Award&ndash;winning series about a Moscow cop, &ldquo;Kaminsky&rsquo;s a master of tone, maintaining the edgy excitement of suspense&rdquo; (The Washington Post). In the 1960s, Russian children wanted to be cosmonauts like Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space. But the Soviet Union is history, and Gagarin&rsquo;s glory is long gone. For the men and women aboard the decaying Mir space station, life is an unending series of near-disasters. During one such breakdown, cosmonaut Tsimion Vladovka asks ground control to contact Moscow police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov if anything happens to him. The cosmonaut returns to Earth safely, but a year later he goes missing and his former crew members start turning up dead. Vladovka was in possession of state secrets, so there&rsquo;s also a potential security risk. He must be found, dead or alive. In the days of the USSR, no one could navigate the bureaucratic maze of the Kremlin like Rostnikov&mdash;but he&rsquo;s never encountered anything like the labyrinth that is Star City, home of the Russian space program. Still, the veteran policeman is convinced: The answer to what happened to the cosmonaut on Earth lies in something that happened in space. Bringing to life historic shifts in contemporary Russian history, as seen through the eyes of one hard-boiled Moscow cop, &ldquo;Kaminsky&rsquo;s Rostnikov novels are among the best mysteries being written&rdquo; (The San Diego Union-Tribune).</div>

Fall of a Cosmonaut

<div>&ldquo;Kaminsky gets Russia right, and Cuba right, but best of all he gets his superb cop Rostnikov altogether right yet another time. Bravo!&rdquo; &mdash;Ed McBain The Soviet Union is dead, and Russian society has been fractured into a thousand pieces. Through those cracks seeps the first serial killer in the country&rsquo;s history, whose exploits send Moscow into a frenzy. As his colleagues hunt for the pipe-wielding maniac who&rsquo;s killed forty women so far, police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov must depart for Havana to avoid an international incident. First, Rostnikov must confront his fear of flying&mdash;or more specifically, flying on Russian airplanes. Assuming he lands safely in Havana, this case will require the utmost diplomacy. A Russian politician is accused of murdering a young Cuban woman. Rostnikov&rsquo;s superiors want things wrapped up cleanly and quickly. Unfortunately, their man in Havana is about to discover there is nothing simple about this murder. &ldquo;In a style reminiscent of Martin Cruz Smith in Gorky Park, Kaminsky effectively transplants the police procedural to the fertile ground of &lsquo;democratic&rsquo; Russia, where it blossoms anew . . . An excellent novel.&rdquo; &mdash;Booklist</div>

Hard Currency

<div>The first novel in a crime series about &ldquo;two Chicago cops, one Jewish, one Irish . . . Told with deceptive simplicity [and] a gentle wit&rdquo; (The Boston Globe). Detectives Abe Lieberman and Bill Hanrahan have been partners a long time&mdash;long enough to call each other &ldquo;Rabbi&rdquo; and &ldquo;Father Murphy.&rdquo; Lieberman is sixty, a grandfather, and a devout Jew. Hanrahan is a lapsed Catholic who&rsquo;s been hitting the bottle pretty heavily ever since his wife walked out on him. They may be flawed, but they&rsquo;re good cops. But even good cops have bad days. On a hot Chicago afternoon, Lieberman would prefer to be watching his beloved Cubs from the bleachers at Wrigley Field instead of sitting in his brother Maish&rsquo;s deli with Hanrahan, meeting a prostitute and valued informant. But Estralda Valdez needs their protection from a psychotic john, and the partners agree to watch her back on their off-duty time. That Friday night, while Lieberman is in temple, Hanrahan has the first watch, across the street from Estralda&rsquo;s apartment in a Chinese restaurant. But while he passes the time with two doubles and flirts with the waitress, the beautiful prostitute is brutally murdered. Tortured by guilt and chewed out by their chief, Lieberman and Hanrahan race against the clock to find the killer. They owe at least that much to Estralda. Lieberman&rsquo;s Folly is &ldquo;first-rate work, featuring characters you can almost touch and streets you can almost walk on, and an expertly plotted story&rdquo; (The Phildelphia Inquirer).</div>

Lieberman's Folly

<div>In an era of financial free-for-all in Russia, a Moscow cop deals with rampant crime in a &ldquo;terrific&rdquo; and &ldquo;exceptional&rdquo; police drama (Detroit Free Press). It&rsquo;s the mid-nineties, and capitalism and privatization have come to Russia. As the trickle of cash turns to a torrent, bureaucrats become oligarchs, and the brutal Russian mafia is on the rise. Newfound democracy has not reduced the crime rate, and Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov, a forty-year veteran of the Moscow police department, and his colleagues have their hands full. A prominent businessman is kidnapped in broad daylight. Three children&mdash;as innocent looking as they are savage&mdash;terrorize a slum. And a house full of Czarist treasures is raided by tax police&mdash;only to have every piece vanish the following day. As criminals at all levels rush to exploit a system in confusion, &ldquo;Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov is a rarity among policemen: shrewd, utterly incorruptible and destined to survive each complex political shift&rdquo; (Publishers Weekly, starred review).</div>

Blood and Rubles

<div>A Moscow cop is left out in the cold in this &ldquo;impressive&rdquo; 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 assigned to only the most hopeless cases, one of which is about to take Rostnikov deep into Siberia. A corrupt commissar has been stabbed through the eye with an icicle. A murder at this level should be a top priority, but Rostnikov gets the distinct impression that the powers-that-be would prefer this case go unsolved&mdash;and that Rostnikov not survive this Siberian winter. &ldquo;As always, Kaminsky provides a colorful, tightly written mystery . . . filled with twists, countertwists, and a surprise ending that is plausible and clever.&rdquo; &mdash;Chicago Tribune</div>

A Cold Red Sunrise

<div>A Moscow cop juggles cases of kidnapping, murder, and a missing Czarist-era document in a modern-day mystery with &ldquo;never a dull moment&rdquo; (Library Journal). In the waning days of the Russian Empire, the Czar inked a secret treaty with Japan that was stolen en route by one of the workmen on the Trans-Siberian Railway. More than a one hundred years later, the Soviet Union has gone the way of the Czardom, and police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov is trying to find his way in the Russia of Vladimir Putin. A large amount of money is being sent from Odessa to Vladivostok to purchase a mysterious Czarist document, and Rostnikov&rsquo;s superior believes it may be this long-lost treaty. Eastbound ticket in hand, Rostnikov sets out to investigate. Meanwhile, his subordinates in Moscow tackle a female Jack the Ripper and an anti-Semitic punk rocker whose mob connections may have gotten him kidnapped. It&rsquo;s a brave new world in western Russia, but where Rostnikov is going, the landscape hasn&rsquo;t changed in centuries.</div>

Murder on the Trans-Siberian Express

<div>A Chicago cop is out to avenge his nephew&rsquo;s murder in this &ldquo;masterly creation&rdquo; that puts the Edgar Award&ndash;winning author in &ldquo;the Parker/Paretsky league&rdquo; (Chicago Tribune). When you&rsquo;re a sixty-two-year-old cop with bad knees, most days feel pretty long. But the longest day of Abe Lieberman&rsquo;s life begins just after midnight when he learns his nephew David has been shot dead and David&rsquo;s pregnant wife has been gravely injured by two gunmen trying to rob the couple. Now Carol is barely clinging to life, and it&rsquo;s up to Lieberman to track down the killers. With the help of his partner, the troubled alcoholic Bill Hanrahan, Lieberman will turn the city upside down to find the men who stole his nephew&rsquo;s bright future. But as they step out into the howling Chicago wind, it&rsquo;s clear both partners will need to fight to survive the day that started out terrible and is about to get a lot worse. This day in the life of two veteran Chicago cops is &ldquo;beautifully rendered . . . Kaminsky is extraordinarily attuned to the domestic minutiae of his detectives&rsquo; lives&rdquo; (The New York Times Book Review).</div>

Lieberman's Day

<div>This &ldquo;superb mystery-thriller&rdquo; featuring a Moscow cop reminiscent of Arkady Renko delivers &ldquo;riveting suspense&rdquo; (Publishers Weekly). Porfiry Rostnikov and his wife Sarah have been in love for decades, since the end of World War II. Now the police inspector is by his wife&rsquo;s bedside as she recuperates from a brain operation, when a massive naked man staggers into her hospital room, scared out of his mind, and tries to jump out the window. Rostnikov restrains the bearlike man, trying to calm him. As orderlies arrive to return the escapee to the mental ward, he cries out: &ldquo;The devil came to devour the factory.&rdquo; Rostnikov has far more important things on his mind than deciphering the ravings of a lunatic, first among them Sarah&rsquo;s recovery. And of course crime has not stopped while he cares for his wife. Rebels are planting bombs, teenagers are plotting assassinations, and the KGB lurks in every shadow. But despite all these clamors, the man&rsquo;s strange words continue to haunt Rostnikov&mdash;and compel him to investigate. With his Edgar Award&ndash;winning Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov mysteries, &ldquo;Kaminsky has staked a claim to a piece of Russian turf . . . He captures the Russian scene and character in rich detail&rdquo; (The Washington Post Book World).</div>

The Man Who Walked Like a Bear

<div>Moscow&rsquo;s gone to the dogs in the &ldquo;imaginative&rdquo; Edgar Award&ndash;winning crime series about a conscientious Russian cop (The New York Times Book Review). With packs of stray wild canines roaming Moscow, it was inevitable that enterprising criminals would find a way to get rich. As dogfighting became big business, the Mafia got involved, and venues upgraded from alleys and garages to private arenas with padded seats. Police Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov has assigned Sasha Tkach and Elena Timofeyeva to go undercover and bust up a dogfighting ring. But the only ones more vicious than the dogs are the ones who profit from them. Speaking of fighting in the streets, an international drug cartel has chosen Moscow as its next port of call. One man stands in their way&mdash;a young Russian mobster whose brutality is matched only by his madness. In a gang war of this magnitude, no civilian is safe. It&rsquo;s up to Rostnikov and the Office of Special Investigation to prevent a full-scale bloodbath. &ldquo;As usual, Kaminsky manages to make the postlapsarian fracas strangely engrossing. His major characters are vivid and varied . . . Good storytelling in yet another of a distinguished series.&rdquo; &mdash;Kirkus Reviews</div>

The Dog Who Bit a Policeman

<div>Murder intrudes on a Moscow cop&rsquo;s vacation: &ldquo;Kaminsky&rsquo;s Rostnikov novels are among the best mysteries being written&rdquo; (The San Diego Union-Tribune). Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov is finding spring in Yalta to be quite lovely. Accompanying his wife, Sarah, as she gets much needed rest and recuperation after her surgery, reading American crime novels, and gazing at the Black Sea, the Moscow cop is reasonably content&mdash;even if his superiors did insist that he take this vacation. But his time off is destined to be short-lived. A former colleague with emphysema has come south to improve his health. Instead Georgi Vasilievich has dropped dead from what appears to be heart failure. The inspector is not so sure. The local officials want to sweep the incident under the rug. But it turns out Vasilievich was investigating a high-level military conspiracy. Rostnikov takes a look at his files, putting him on the trail of a gang of hardliners who refuse to give up the Soviet dream&mdash;and who will go to murderous lengths to ensure that perestroika never comes to pass. With his Edgar Award&ndash;winning Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov series, &ldquo;Kaminsky takes care not to rob his beleaguered cops of their human core&mdash;a courtesy he also extends to Moscow, which comes across as a character in its own right: rough and dangerous and somehow tragic&rdquo; (The New York Times).</div>

Rostnikov's Vacation

<div>With his Chicago cops, Edgar Award winner &ldquo;Kaminsky is hard to beat for a thoughtful, well-plotted, well-written mystery&rdquo; (The Washington Post Book World). Most days, the counters at Maish&rsquo;s Deli on Chicago&rsquo;s North Side are crowded with elderly Jewish men who trade stories and crack wise. But today, the mood at Maish&rsquo;s is grim. Someone has vandalized the local temple&mdash;the fifth in a row&mdash;and stolen a priceless Torah, and only Abe Lieberman can set things right. A veteran cop whose low-key attitude and sardonic humor conceal an intense commitment to justice, Lieberman is taking the break-in very personally&mdash;the synagogue&rsquo;s president just happens to be his wife. With the help of his lapsed Catholic partner, Bill Hanrahan, Lieberman must straddle the roles of detective and diplomat, tracking down the thugs who defaced the temples while at the same time brokering peace between the North Side&rsquo;s warring factions before they tear the city apart. Because when it comes to the law, the cop they call &ldquo;Rabbi&rdquo; understands that while he may work for the Chicago police department, he also serves a higher authority. Abe Lieberman is &ldquo;smart, tough, empathetic, and just a tad crazy when circumstances require.&rdquo; And Lieberman&rsquo;s Law &ldquo;is a wonderfully rich cop novel&rdquo; (Booklist).</div>

Lieberman's Law

<div>From Hollywood&rsquo;s Golden Age to a rock &rsquo;n&rsquo; roll tragedy, this pair of detective novels from two award-winning maestros of mystery hits all the right notes. From Edgar Award&ndash;winning author Stuart M. Kaminsky, Dancing in the Dark shines a light on the 1940s Los Angeles dancing scene. Paired with Ellery Queen Award&ndash;winning author Ed Gorman&rsquo;s &ldquo;gripping, amusing, thoughtful and hugely entertaining&rdquo; The Day the Music Died, these two kooky and delightful mysteries are now available in one volume (Dean Koontz). Dancing in the Dark by Stuart M. Kaminsky: It&rsquo;s going to take some fancy footwork for hard-boiled Hollywood private detective Toby Peters to get Fred Astaire off the hook. After giving a gangster&rsquo;s moll dancing lessons, he tires of her making passes at him and hires the famously discreet private investigator to break the news gently. When a killer cuts in and the moll ends up dead, Peters must take the lead in solving the case . . . or face the music himself. The Day the Music Died by Ed Gorman: After his rock &rsquo;n&rsquo; roll hero, Buddy Holly, dies in a plane crash, young Iowa lawyer and part-time PI Sam McCain just wants to play his records and grieve&mdash;until the nephew of an eccentric judge kills himself after his trophy wife is murdered. The police see it as a clear-cut murder-suicide, but Sam wants to know more. But diving into this mystery will get dangerous faster than he can say &ldquo;bye, bye, Miss American Pie.&rdquo;</div>

Melody and Murder

<div>From the Edgar Award–winning author, a novel of danger, despair, and determination with “an incredibly taut plot that keeps twisting back on itself” (Mystery Scene). 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 that he’s really good at helping people get out of bad situations. That he matters. And Lew’s therapist, who alternately acts as his conscience and his sparring partner, tells him that unless he’s willing to leave the planet, it’s about time that he goes back to Chicago and closes the door to the past so he can finally get on with the rest of his life. Lew hates to admit it, but he’s beginning to see her point. So Lew returns to his hometown, to friends and family . . . and to a grief that threatens to engulf him. He’s resolved to dig until he finds out who killed his wife. In doing so, he’ll uncover both sweet and painful memories of his past. He’ll also confront a murderer who’ll not hesitate to kill again to make sure secrets stay buried . . . “Will] keep readers hurtling along to the very end.” —Publishers Weekly “A psychologically acute and fast-moving crime series.” —Booklist</div>

Always Say Goodbye

<div>Three years ago Lew Fonseca quit his job as a process server with the State Attourney's Office in Cook County, Illinois, and drove his rattling Toyota south to escape the memories of his beloved late wife. Headed for Key West, the Toyota broke down in a Dairy Queen parking lot in Sarasota, Florida. Buoyed by the friendship of a few trustworthy souls, Lew settled there, making ends meet by doing some investigative work for local attourneys. Now, Lew is hired by Carl Sebastian, one of Lew's lawyer's clients, to find his missing wife. Following up on a few leads, Lew finds himself being trailed by a mysterious burly man, and saddled with another missing person case -- this time a runaway teen. With the help of some friends, Lew seems to be getting closer and closer to Melanie -- but will he find her before the unthinkable happens? At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.</div>

Vengeance

<div>Edgar Award–Winning Author: A downhearted detective deals with missing persons and murder in the “psychologically acute and fast-moving crime series” (Booklist). Lew Fonesca is a guy just trying to get along. When his wife died in a senseless auto wreck, he got up and left his old life—and when his car gave out in sunny Sarasota, Florida, he stayed. He takes small process-serving gigs and various odd jobs helping people out, and he tries, although maybe not as hard as he should, to fix the gaping hole in his heart. But for a man who just wants to ease through life without any complications, Lew has a pretty full plate. The shrink he’s been seeing for over a year wants him to finally dump all the grief he’s carrying around so he can have more than a half-life. And Sally, the pretty single mom and social worker who’s helped Lew in the past, wants to deepen their friendship. On top of that, a local minister asks him to find a town council member who’s gone missing just before a crucial vote that could ruin a struggling community, and a distraught father comes to Lew to track down his wife and two kids, who Lew suspects ran off with the man’s best friend. When people start showing up dead, Lew knows he’s in way over his head—and this time he may not be able make it all come out okay. . . . “There are three things we’ve come to expect from a Kaminsky story: superb plotting, real-world dialogue and character development. He doesn’t place a foot wrong in any of these departments in Midnight Pass.” —Sarasota Herald-Tribune “Good dark fun.” —Chicago Tribune </div>

Midnight Pass

<div>A Florida process server trying to pick up the pieces of his life looks into a hit-and-run mystery in this “compelling” crime novel by the Edgar Award winner (Kirkus Reviews). 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 and 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 fact that everyone she tells her story to—her family, the hospital staff, and finally the cops—tell her that it just couldn’t have happened. The other has Lew trying to identify a hit-and-run driver who killed a fourteen-year-old boy, and dredges up some very painful memories. As Lew begins to dig deeper into both cases he finds that they’re tied together in ways he can’t hope to untangle. And when someone tries to run him down, he knows he’s getting close to some nasty home truths . . . Praise for the Lew Fonesca series “A psychologically acute and fast-moving crime series.” —Booklist “Kaminsky is such a pro that the pages fly by, and even though Lew is often such a sad sack, it’s hard not to root for him.” —Chicago Tribune “Grabs readers and takes them on a memorably tumultuous ride.” —Publishers Weekly </div>

Denial

<div>PI and process-server Lew Fonesca returns in a “nail-biting missing-persons case” from the Edgar Award–winning author of Vengeance (Booklist). Stuart M. Kaminsky, the veteran author of more than forty novels and the creator of such wonderful characters as Abe Lieberman, Toby Peters, and Inspector Rostnikov, has created a new PI: Lew Fonesca, a world-weary guy who got in a car and just started driving after his wife died and wound up in front of a Dairy Queen in Sarasota, Florida. He now makes his way amid bail jumpers and lost wives, people who want to be found and those who will do anything to stay under their rock. He spends his days solving cases both big and small and trying to get by, while attempting to figure out how to make the rest of his life make sense. Retribution not only picks up where the first novel in the series, Vengeance, left off, but raises the bar big-time. Lew has solved his share of cases, and most of them—to his pride—have wound up having happy endings; in Vengeance, he saved a young runaway who has had a childhood nobody should ever have, and she finally seems to be turning her life around. But when she becomes involved with a reclusive bestselling author and several valuable manuscripts disappear, Lew knows that young Melanie is in way over her head. And if he doesn’t act fast, not only could a few reputations get tarnished—the bodies might start piling up. </div>

Books By Stuart M. Kaminsky (53 Books)

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