The Melting Clock

Stuart M. Kaminsky

Dec 2011 · The Toby Peters Mysteries Book 16 · Open Road Media

About this eBook

Time is running out for surrealist painter Salvador Dalí and a 1940s Hollywood PI: “Fast-paced, well-plotted, consistently funny” (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 Dalí, dressed in a rabbit suit, repeatedly muttering “grasshoppers” as they try to make their escape.
 
It all started when Dalí hired a gang of burglars to steal three of his own paintings—a publicity stunt that spiraled out of control when the thieves refused to give the missing masterpieces back. Dalí hired Peters to find the artwork, but now it seems the pair may have painted themselves into a corner.
 
“The flamboyant prankster-artist [Dalí] holds his own among the hero’s circle of zany friends in Mr. Kaminsky’s Technicolor fantasy of 1940’s Hollywood.” —The New York Times
 
“Once again Kaminsky mixes the real—in this case the surreal—with the fictional for a quick-paced, clever revisionist Hollywood romp.” —Publishers Weekly

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.