Toby Peters mysteries

The place: Hollywood. The time: 1940. The case: protect Warner Brothers' biggest star Errol Flynn. The detective: the toughest and wittiest in many a paper moon ... Toby Peters.

As a hard-boiled Hollywood PI enlists Al Capone's help to save the Marx Brothers, Kaminsky "makes the totally wacky possible" (The Washington Post).

It's 1941 and the Marx Brothers' first movie for MGM, Go West, has the country in stitches. But now Chico Marx is worried he's going to need stitches when he receives a severed ear in the mail—a simple message from a Chicago bookie who wants $120,000, or...

The stakes are life and death when Bela Lugosi is threatened in this "affectionate parody of the hard-boiled private-eye" genre (The New York Times).

1942: In the basement of a crumbling Los Angeles movie palace, five vampires crowd around Bela Lugosi. They should not frighten the fading horror icon, who found worldwide fame as Dracula, for these are only wannabes—diehard fans who get their kicks dressing up as bloodsuckers....

A circus stakeout puts Toby Peters at the bottom of the food chain The gorilla doesn't like clowns. Normally that wouldn't bother Toby Peters, since detective work tends to keep him far away from animal cages, but tonight he's dressed as a clown and locked in with the ape. The animal's handler told him not to worry-gorillas don't eat people. They just like to tear their arms and legs off.   What the ape doesn't understand is that Peters is here for...

Hollywood PI Toby Peters looks for a kidnapped dog-with political connections If he is surprised to find Eleanor Roosevelt waiting for him in his dingy little office, Toby Peters does not show it. Although this is his first time working for the First Lady of the United States, years of private investigations for the Hollywood elite have left him unfazed by a famous face. The First Lady comes straight to the point. Six months after Pearl Harbor, the...

A hotel murder involves Toby Peters with one of Hollywood's toughest stars Toby Peters wakes up with a headache, a gun in his face, and a body on the hotel-room bed. He is less surprised by the gun than by the man holding it: Marion Morrison, a.k.a John Wayne. Both of them were lured here by the dead man. The next arrival is a prostitute named Olivia, and hot on her heels is the house detective, who's come to check on the commotion in Room 303. Reasoning...

In a fun series with "shades of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett," a 1940s PI must find out who's gunning for Peter Lorre (TheSan Diego Union-Tribune).

Scaly-voiced and bug-eyed actor Peter Lorre has become one of the most recognizable faces in Hollywood, especially after appearing in the Sam Spade crime drama, The Maltese Falcon, last year. Yet Hollywood PI Toby Peters still has to contend with his landlady...

A killer terrorizes the San Francisco opera, and Toby Peters may be his next victim The year 1942 is a bad time 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 in the dark months following Pearl Harbor. Newspaper editorialists rage against the production, opera buffs picket the theater, and a note appears nailed to the house...

Protecting a starlet from kidnappers gets Toby Peters kidnapped himself For Hollywood private eye Toby Peters, hell is Bette Davis. After two days locked in a hotel room with the Oscar-winning diva, her ice-queen persona and witty repartee are driving him mad. He's there on behalf of her husband Albert Farnsworth, an aeronautics engineer with a head full of government secrets. Blackmailers are threatening his wife, demanding plans for America's new...

To save a film star's fingers, Toby Peters gives dance lessons Fred Astaire has a headache named Luna. The moll of a well-known Los Angeles gangster, Luna has demanded dance lessons from Hollywood's finest hoofer, and whatever Luna wants, Luna gets. But after two lessons with the lead-footed lady, Astaire tires of her making passes at him, and hires famously discreet private investigator Toby Peters to break the news gently. Trouble is, Luna and her...

Toby hunts for the man who wants to kill a fallen star of silent film As Toby Peters crouches behind a tombstone, hiding from a crazed gunman, the private eye thinks of Charlie Chaplin. A few days earlier, the pioneer of film comedy sat in Toby's office, and told him of the hundreds of people who want him dead. Beloved when his public could not hear him speak, his political leanings have made him a pariah. Right-wing radicals, the Ku Klux Klan, and...

"A page-turning romp" from the Edgar Award–winning author featuring a nutty dentist, a killer crossbow, and Joan Crawford in 1940s Hollywood (Booklist, starred review).

Mildred Minck is an unremarkable woman—until one tragic night in June 1944 when she becomes the first citizen of Los Angeles to be murdered by crossbow. The prime suspect is her husband, dentist Sheldon Minck, who's found standing over her body...