Bullet for a Star

Stuart M. Kaminsky

Dec 2011 · The Toby Peters Mysteries Book 1 · Open Road Media

About this ebook

The first in a mystery series set in 1940s Hollywood, where a hard-boiled private eye helps a cast of real-life stars: “Nostalgic fun” (Publishers Weekly).
 
Hollywood, 1940: It’s been four years since security guard Toby Peters got fired from the Warner Brothers lot for breaking a screen cowboy’s arm. Since then he’s scratched out a living as a private detective—missing persons and bodyguard work mostly—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’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’s up to Peters to clear Flynn’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’s Sam Spade, he doesn’t fall prey to being star-struck. But he may still fall prey to a killer.
 
“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.” —Houston Chronicle

Ratings and reviews

Toby Peters finds himself in a jam when helping a star leads to murder.

About the author

DIVStuart M. Kaminsky (1934–2009) was one of the most prolific crime fiction authors of the last four decades. Born in Chicago, he spent his youth immersed in pulp fiction and classic cinema—two forms of popular entertainment which he would make his life’s work. After college and a stint in the army, Kaminsky wrote film criticism and biographies of the great actors and directors of Hollywood’s Golden Age. In 1977, when a planned biography of Charlton Heston fell through, Kaminsky wrote Bullet for a Star, his first Toby Peters novel, beginning a fiction career that would last the rest of his life./divDIV /divKaminsky penned twenty-four novels starring the detective, whom he described as “the anti-Philip Marlowe.” In 1981’s Death of a Dissident, Kaminsky debuted Moscow police detective Porfiry Rostnikov, whose stories were praised for their accurate depiction of Soviet life. His other two series starred Abe Lieberman, a hardened Chicago cop, and Lew Fonseca, a process server. In all, Kaminsky wrote more than sixty novels. He died in St. Louis in 2009.