Fiction, Mystery & Crime, Fiction Subjects

High Midnight (Toby Peters Series #6)

Name: High Midnight (Toby Peters Series #6)
Author: Stuart M. Kaminsky
ISBN: 9781453232897

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

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Overview

Toby Peters tries to protect a Western star against a vicious salami-mogulToby Peters is enjoying a moonlighting gig as the house detective at a hot-sheets motel when two giant men come to take him for a ride. They’re Chicago toughs, visiting Los Angeles with their boss, Lombardi, who has come west to establish himself as the cold-cuts king of California. His message to Peters is simple: Stop asking questions and tell Cooper he didn’t find anything. Or else. “Cooper” is Gary Cooper, who recently hired a detective named Toby Peters to quiet a blackmailer. But that wasn’t Toby—it was the dentist who shares his office. The amateur sleuth bungled the case so badly that now they’re all in danger from Lombardi, the blackmailers, and anyone else with a hot head and a .45. If Toby Peters can’t sort this out quickly, the next batch of Lombardi hot dogs will be made of one hundred percent pure-ground detective.

About the Author, Stuart M. Kaminsky

Stuart 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. Kaminsky 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.

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Editorials

Library Journal

Someone wants Gary Cooper to make a movie badly enough to resort to threats, blackmail, and murder. But when private eye Toby Peters arrives on the scene, things start to get interesting. High Midnight, Kaminsky's (Bullet for a Star, Audio Reviews, LJ 11/1/94) 1981 comedic mystery, is set during the golden days of Hollywood. With news of World War II in the background and the price of Ann Page spaghetti at two cans for 13, Kaminsky's private eye wends his way through the Hollywood hills, hunting for the killers and running into the likes of Ernest Hemingway. Along the way, Toby stumbles over corpses, avoids stray bullets, and tries to keep from being turned into a Kosher hot dog by some menacing East Coast thugs. Despite these promising elements, though, the story line and characters are weak. Narrator Christopher Lane makes a gallant effort to infuse some life into this audiobook but to little avail. High Midnight is not one of Kaminsky's best. Not recommended.-Gretchen Browne, Rockville Centre P.L., N.Y.