New Releases by Stuart M. Kaminsky

From Hollywood’s Golden Age to a rock ’n’ roll tragedy, this pair of detective novels from two award-winning maestros of mystery hits all the right notes. From Edgar Award–winning author Stuart M. Kaminsky, Dancing in the Dark shines a light on the 1940s Los Angeles dancing scene. Paired with Ellery Queen Award–winning author Ed Gorman’s “gripping, amusing, thoughtful and hugely entertaining” 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’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’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 ’n’ 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—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 “bye, bye, Miss American Pie.”

With his wife in the hospital, Porfiry Rostnikov tries to protect Moscow from chaos. Porfiry and Sarah Rostnikov have been in love since the end of World War II, growing old together as the Soviet Union lurches towards modernity. Sarah is recovering from a brain operation, her police inspector husband at her side, when a bearlike man staggers into her hospital room. Hulking, naked, and insensible, he is about to leap out the window when Rostnikov talks him off the ledge. But before the orderlies take him away, the giant whispers a secret to the investigator. Someone has been stealing from the.

An international gang war chooses Moscow as its battlefield. Moscow police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov has adapted well to life without Communism. But under the Soviets, blood feuds were pursued in the dark halls of bureaucracy, and now they take place in the streets. An international drug ring has chosen Moscow as its next port of call, and the only thing standing in its way is the budding Russian mob, headed by a young man whose brutality is matched only by his madness. In a gang war of this magnitude, no civilian is safe. As Rostnikov tries to stop an army of two-legged killers, his coh.

A “chilling . . . stunning thriller” from the Edgar Award–winning author of Exercise in Terror (Booklist). It is 1957, and Jean Kaiser is pretending to sleep. When her parents go to bed, she’ll turn her radio on low, and groove to Elvis. But from her parents’ room, she hears something strange—her mother calling her name in a choking, terrified voice so chilling that Jean assumes it can’t be real, and wills herself to sleep. When she awakens in the morning, the nightmare has come true—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’ murder. When Jean and her daughter, Angie, get home, they find their pet parakeet crushed to death over Jean’s bed. Her parents’ killer has reemerged ready to tie up loose ends. The nightmare never ended, and now Jean and Angie must fight—or die.

A veteran Chicago cop who’s also a mensch, “Lieberman is endearing, wise in his crochets, weary with his wisdom” (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’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’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—and why. Edgar Award winner Stuart M. Kaminsky’s The Last Dark Place is “an entertaining crime novel that should send new readers in search of its predecessors” (Publishers Weekly).

This taut thriller from the Edgar Award–winning author of When the Dark Man Calls “builds with great tension to a shocking conclusion” (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—a couple of drunks who followed them here from the supermarket—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’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 . . .

A Chicago cop is out to avenge his nephew’s murder in this “masterly creation” that puts the Edgar Award–winning author in “the Parker/Paretsky league” (Chicago Tribune). When you’re a sixty-two-year-old cop with bad knees, most days feel pretty long. But the longest day of Abe Lieberman’s life begins just after midnight when he learns his nephew David has been shot dead and David’s pregnant wife has been gravely injured by two gunmen trying to rob the couple. Now Carol is barely clinging to life, and it’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’s bright future. But as they step out into the howling Chicago wind, it’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 “beautifully rendered . . . Kaminsky is extraordinarily attuned to the domestic minutiae of his detectives’ lives” (The New York Times Book Review).

Two Chicago cops need to defuse an explosive situation in this “tightly plotted” 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’ll detonate enough explosives to blow the whole block sky high. If it’s a choice between chewing the fat at his brother Maish’s deli or hunting down armed lunatics, world-weary veteran cop Abe Lieberman knows where he stands. But no one’s giving him a choice. It’s up to Lieberman and his longtime partner, Bill Hanrahan—aka the Rabbi and Father Murphy—to play Bernie’s game, betting their lives on a madman’s whim. With a crazed cop holding “enough explosives to blow the North Side of Chicago to kingdom come . . . Kaminsky mines plenty of suspense” (The New York Times Book Review).

With his Chicago cops, Edgar Award winner “Kaminsky is hard to beat for a thoughtful, well-plotted, well-written mystery” (The Washington Post Book World). Most days, the counters at Maish’s Deli on Chicago’s North Side are crowded with elderly Jewish men who trade stories and crack wise. But today, the mood at Maish’s is grim. Someone has vandalized the local temple—the fifth in a row—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—the synagogue’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’s warring factions before they tear the city apart. Because when it comes to the law, the cop they call “Rabbi” understands that while he may work for the Chicago police department, he also serves a higher authority. Abe Lieberman is “smart, tough, empathetic, and just a tad crazy when circumstances require.” And Lieberman’s Law “is a wonderfully rich cop novel” (Booklist).

An Edgar Award–winning author steals the show again in “a beautifully calibrated mix of wit, suspense, and quiet honesty” (The Washington Post Book World). It should have been an easy score—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’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’s claim of a robbery-gone-wrong just doesn’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—and he just might get one . . . if the killer doesn’t catch the thief first. “Outstanding . . . Another stellar performance, alight with menace and compassion.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

The first novel in a crime series about “two Chicago cops, one Jewish, one Irish . . . Told with deceptive simplicity [and] a gentle wit” (The Boston Globe). Detectives Abe Lieberman and Bill Hanrahan have been partners a long time—long enough to call each other “Rabbi” and “Father Murphy.” Lieberman is sixty, a grandfather, and a devout Jew. Hanrahan is a lapsed Catholic who’s been hitting the bottle pretty heavily ever since his wife walked out on him. They may be flawed, but they’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’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’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’s Folly is “first-rate work, featuring characters you can almost touch and streets you can almost walk on, and an expertly plotted story” (The Phildelphia Inquirer).

A Moscow cop is left out in the cold in this “impressive” 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—and that Rostnikov not survive this Siberian winter. “As always, Kaminsky provides a colorful, tightly written mystery . . . filled with twists, countertwists, and a surprise ending that is plausible and clever.” —Chicago Tribune

This “superb mystery-thriller” featuring a Moscow cop reminiscent of Arkady Renko delivers “riveting suspense” (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’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: “The devil came to devour the factory.” Rostnikov has far more important things on his mind than deciphering the ravings of a lunatic, first among them Sarah’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’s strange words continue to haunt Rostnikov—and compel him to investigate. With his Edgar Award–winning Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov mysteries, “Kaminsky has staked a claim to a piece of Russian turf . . . He captures the Russian scene and character in rich detail” (The Washington Post Book World).

This thrilling crime novel features “the best cop to come out of the Soviet Union since Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko” (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’s death sends the nation into turmoil, and makes escape impossible. His career derailed, the veteran cop is reduced to investigating penny-ante murders—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—if it doesn’t cost him his life. The Edgar Award–winning Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov series is one more reason why New York Times–bestselling author Tony Hillerman says, “Never miss a Kaminsky book.”

Moscow’s gone to the dogs in the “imaginative” Edgar Award–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—a young Russian mobster whose brutality is matched only by his madness. In a gang war of this magnitude, no civilian is safe. It’s up to Rostnikov and the Office of Special Investigation to prevent a full-scale bloodbath. “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.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Kaminsky gets Russia right, and Cuba right, but best of all he gets his superb cop Rostnikov altogether right yet another time. Bravo!” —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’s history, whose exploits send Moscow into a frenzy. As his colleagues hunt for the pipe-wielding maniac who’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—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’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. “In a style reminiscent of Martin Cruz Smith in Gorky Park, Kaminsky effectively transplants the police procedural to the fertile ground of ‘democratic’ Russia, where it blossoms anew . . . An excellent novel.” —Booklist

A Soviet cop stars in this novel of “sweaty-palmed suspense . . . Equal parts likeable characters and believable dangers” (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—one American, one Japanese, and two Russians—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’ 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–nominated follow-up to Death of a Dissident confirms Stuart Kaminsky’s status as “the Ed McBain of Mother Russia” (Kirkus Reviews).

With his Edgar Award–winning series about a Moscow cop, “Kaminsky’s a master of tone, maintaining the edgy excitement of suspense” (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’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’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—but he’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, “Kaminsky’s Rostnikov novels are among the best mysteries being written” (The San Diego Union-Tribune).

In the Edgar Award–winning crime series featuring a veteran Moscow cop, “Kaminsky evokes Russian life like a born Muscovite” (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’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’s investigating a hate-fueled crime wave, as a bloodthirsty gunman wages a campaign to systematically exterminate the city’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’s long-running, Edgar Award–winning series has seen his intensely moral Moscow police inspector through the turbulence of several regimes, and always “Kaminsky takes care not to rob his beleaguered cops of their human core” (The New York Times).

“Never miss a Kaminsky book, and be especially sure not to miss Death of a Russian Priest.” —Tony Hillerman, New York Times–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’t watch their steps, someone may need to say the last rites for them. With the Edgar Award–winning Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov series, “Stuart Kaminsky evokes Russian life like a born Muscovite. . . . Don’t miss this one. It’s even better than his Edgar-winning A Cold Red Sunrise.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer “Kaminsky moves closer to becoming the Ed McBain of Mother Russia . . . The usual strengths of the series—ingenious plotting, solid police procedure, and Rostnikov’s shrewdly perceptive presence—are joined here by casually effective glimpses of the old Soviet Union in chancy transition. It all adds up to Rostnikov’s best outing since A Cold Red Sunrise.” —Kirkus Reviews

In this mystery introducing a hard-boiled Soviet police inspector, “Kaminsky gets Russia right” (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–era hero, Porfiry Rostnikov is “quite simply the best cop to come out of the Soviet Union since Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko in Gorky Park.” (San Francisco Examiner)

A 1940s Hollywood gumshoe heads to San Francisco to foil a very real phantom of the opera in this “believable and entertaining” mystery (Publishers Weekly). 1942 is a dangerous year to stage Madama Butterfly. Although Puccini’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—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’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. “Hardly a pause separates the frightful, madly comic and nostalgic incidents made believable and entertaining in Kaminsky’s artful handling” (Publishers Weekly).

With “shades of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett,” a 1940s Los Angeles private eye must recover FDR’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’s doorstep, but none can touch the hem of the dress of the First Lady herself, Eleanor Roosevelt, who’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’s sprightly Scottish terrier, Fala, has been kidnapped and replaced by an imposter, and she wants Peters to find the real rover—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–winning author Stuart M. Kaminsky “has a delightfully original mind enriching—rather than borrowing from—an old literary form” (Los Angeles Times).

This “enjoyable lark” 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—before he became one of the silver screen’s most recognizable funnymen. But it’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—Lester O. Hipnoodle? “Even on the printed page . . . Fields’ nasal rap seems to rise up and envelop you” in the Edgar Award–winning author’s “mesmerizing” comic mystery (Chicago Sun-Times).

PI Toby Peters comes to the aid of Charlie Chaplin when the Little Tramp becomes a big target in this “ingenious” 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’t talking politics. He demands Chaplin stop making his latest black comedy about a man who murders wealthy women for their money—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’s lead on Fiona comes from a most unlikely source—his landlady, Mrs. Irene Plaut, knows the woman. Rallying his crew of diminutive Gunther Wherthman, wrestler Jeremy Butler, and dentist Sheldon Minck, Toby’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–winning author offers an “ingenious twist on the old serial killer chestnut, with the usual manic Peters ménage obbligato” (Kirkus Reviews).

The final Toby Peters Hollywood whodunit from the Edgar Award–winning author is “a marvelous magic trick of a mystery” 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’t expect the job to include replacing a showgirl for Blackstone’s show-stopping sawing-a-woman-in-half trick after the saboteur has stolen the blade. Peters’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’s competitors ends up dead at a testimonial dinner. With “The Great Blackstone” now a murder suspect, the sleuth will need to pull a rabbit out of a hat to solve this mystery . . .

Gen. Douglas MacArthur enlists the help of a discreet private detective in “one of the sprightliest of the [Toby Peters] series” (Time). It’s September 1942, and Gen. Douglas MacArthur believes he’s got what it takes to win the war in the Pacific—but he’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’s planning. This is one battle he can’t afford to lose. So the general enlists Det. Toby Peters, who has built a reputation for discretion among Hollywood’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’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 “has a delightfully original mind enriching—rather than just borrowing from—an old literary form” (Los Angeles Times).

A PI performs some fancy footwork to protect Fred Astaire as “Edgar winner Kaminsky effortlessly choreographs Hollywood history . . . and dirty doings” (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 “Fingers” (because he likes to cut them off), has demanded dance lessons from Hollywood’s finest hoofer—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’s throat, the grieving gangster makes Peters an offer he can’t refuse: Find the killer—or go from having two left feet to one foot in the grave. Now, instead of punishing the parquet, the silver screen’s most famous song-and-dance man is pounding the pavement with his new partner—a rumpled, middle-aged gumshoe who just wants to live to shuffle through another day . . .