Down for the Count

Stuart M. Kaminsky

Dec 2011 · The Toby Peters Mysteries Book 10 · Open Road Media

About this ebook

In this “lively noir mystery,” 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’s not a cold-blooded killer. Pretty sure, because Peters has just found the boxer standing over a man on the beach who’s clearly been beaten to death. Louis claims he was just out for a run, but it doesn’t look good. Offering his services on the spot, Peters joins the champ’s corner.
 
The corpse isn’t just anyone. He happens to be Peters’s ex-wife’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’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 “vintage Kaminsky.”

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.