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Stuart M. Kaminsky

Toby Peters investigates threats to Judy Garland and a body on the MGM lot. 

A year after The Wizard of Oz's smash success, the yellow brick road is crumbling. The famous sets are stashed on a soundstage in the depths of the MGM back lot while the studio plans a sequel, and a strange addition has just been made to the scene: a munchkin in full costume lying facedown with a knife buried in his back. 

 

The studio boss calls Toby Peters, a Hollywood detective with a reputation for discretion, and asks for help keeping the murder quiet. MGM is a family company, and Judy Garland, who found the body, is a wholesome actress whose rising star cannot risk a whiff of scandal. But as Peters quickly learns, the threat to Miss Garland isn't the tabloids: It's the psychopathic killer whose turf is the back lot, and whose crime of choice is the murder of the silver screen's finest.

mysteriouspress.com

The Toby Peters Mysteries

Murder on the Yellow Brick Road

A counter-espionage job leads to Toby Peters facing the barrel of a gun. 

After midnight, NBC Studios is as quiet as a grave. For Toby Peters, it may as well be a sealed coffin. He came on a stakeout, and has spent hours in the dark of a television soundstage waiting for the appearance of a man with a silenced pistol. The killer has already taken three lives, and Peters's may be the next. After a long wait, Peters's dulled reflexes let the gunman get the drop on him. A frantic chase through the deserted studio leaves Peters shoeless, gunless, and out of ideas. Finally the killer corners him and prepares to fire. 

 

The stakeout was Howard Hughes's idea. Earlier that week, the aviation magnate hired Peters to investigate the theft of top-secret blueprints from his home. What starts as counter-espionage turns into a murder investigation, and Peters finds himself in the uncomfortable role of murderer's bait.

The Howard Hughes Affair

Toby Peters tries to protect a Western star against a vicious salami-mogul. 

Toby 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.

High Midnight

As a favor to his brother, Toby Peters does a job for a fading Hollywood diva. 

You can't trust a man who's dressed as Mae West, especially not in Mae West's house. One of Hollywood's earliest sex symbols, the whip-smart blonde's star has fallen since the Hays Code cracked down on the racy repartee that made her famous. Her latest project is a thinly veiled autobiographical novel, whose only copy is stolen just after she finishes her first draft. Tonight she's having a Mae West party, with every guest a man dressed as her. The thief is among those in drag, and Toby Peters has come to tear off his wig. 

 

He's there as a favor to his brother, a brutal cop who had a fling with West when she first moved to Hollywood. But this is more than a theft. The crook wants to destroy Mae West, and he has murder on his mind.

He Done Her Wrong

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 only thing that keeps her husband from buckling under the pressures of the presidency is his dog, a sprightly black terrier named Fala. As America gears up for war, Mrs. Roosevelt has a secret domestic problem: She fears that Fala has been kidnapped and replaced by an imposter. 

 

As he investigates the dog's whereabouts, Toby learns that the dog is the linchpin in a fiendish plot against the White House. He must recover the real Fala quickly, for the fate of the free world rests in the terrier's paws.

The Fala Factor

Detective Toby Peters hunts the men who killed his ex-wife's new husband. 

Heavyweight champ Joe Louis did not want to find a dead body today. After passing the afternoon with a woman who is not his wife, he's jogging on the beach when he sees two men standing over a corpse. He raises his fists, and they run. Toby Peters is even more sorry to see the body than Louis, for in a way, the dead man is family. Toby's ex-wife called him that morning, begging him to find her husband, who had disappeared after a week of threats on his life. This was not the way she wanted him found. 

 

Peters agrees to help Louis stay out of the papers while he investigates the murder. But when he learns that the dead man had lately taken a serious interest in boxing, a connection to Joe Louis starts to look like a fatal mistake.

Down for the Count

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 that nobody knows all four of them besides the desk clerk, Teddy, the two detectives haul Teddy upstairs, where he confesses to the murder. Wayne, Peters, and Olivia all have careers to protect, so the house detective agrees to keep their names out of it. 

 

It all seems too simple. As he looks into the murder, Toby finds that powerful people want to stop him from learning what happened while he was sleeping in Room 303.

The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance

Only Toby Peters stands in the way of a plot to murder Albert Einstein. 

A dentist dangles from the window of a swanky Park Avenue hotel. Toby Peters, a Los Angeles detective who's very far from home, clutches the man by his jacket, which tears slowly, stich by stich. A dead man lies on the bed, while his killer batters the room door, which is going to pieces as quickly as the dentist's jacket. Somehow, this entire mess is Albert Einstein's fault. 

 

Two nefarious groups have been threatening the great physicist. One, a ring of blackmailers who claim to have evidence that he has been passing nuclear secrets to Russia. The other, a gang of Nazi assassins intent on doing away one of the most famous opponents of Hitler's rule. Einstein hires Toby Peters to nip both problems in the bud. But if Einstein can't figure it out, what chance does Toby have?

Smart Moves

Toby Peters gets caught between a pair of Peter Lorres. 

Hollywood detective Toby Peters is asleep on his floor when the trouble starts. The dentist who shares his office calls, wailing that his wife has left him. Toby is shocked that a woman as unpleasant as Mildred could attract a suitor. Even more surprising is the name of the alleged Lothario: Peter Lorre, the scaly-voiced, bug-eyed Hollywood villain. Though he can't imagine why the dentist would want her back, Toby agrees to track down his missing wife. 

 

He finds Lorre in a greasy spoon near the Warner Brothers' lot, but the actor doesn't know a thing about missing Mildred. Her boyfriend turns out to be a Peter Lorre impersonator, and by the time Toby finds him, he's doing a passable imitation of a dead man. The bullet was meant for the real Lorre, who has just become Toby's client -- whether he likes it or not.

Think Fast, Mr. Peters

Toby joins forces with a famous PI to save a general from embarrassment. 

The uniformed man standing before Toby Peters is General Douglas MacArthur, a soldier who considers himself the only man who can defeat the Japanese. But though he may be all-powerful in the South Pacific, today he is in Los Angeles with a problem only a detective can solve. The general has an eye on a post-war promotion to the White House, and an aide has stolen his war chest, his donor list, and a handful of embarrassing private letters. To get them back, Toby may need some help. Lucky for him, he's just met Dashiell Hammett, one of the finest crime novelists of all time. Dodging his mistress while he's waiting to rejoin the army, Dash needs amusement and thinks Toby's case sounds like a lark. 

 

In fact, the assignment proves dangerous. Toby may not be a soldier, but he's finally gotten a chance to die at a general's whim.

Buried Caesars

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 door, threatening violence against the cast and crew. When the first workman dies, the maestro calls Toby Peters, a Los Angeles detective who works discreetly for Hollywood's rich and famous. 

 

Two days remain before the opening night, and the body count continues to rise. As he hunts for this self-styled phantom of the opera, Toby falls for one of the company starlets. They must tread lightly, or risk a death more dramatic than anything Puccini ever dreamed of.

Poor Butterfly

A prank by a flamboyant Spanish artist could cost Toby Peters his life. 

An ax-wielding monk hacks at the door. Toby Peters is on the other side, running as fast as his recently broken leg will allow. Alongside him is Salvador Dalí, dressed in a rabbit suit, insistently muttering 'grasshoppers' as they try to make their escape. Dalí insists on being carried across the lawn, so Peters hobbles along with the surrealist in his arms. They get in the car just as the monk chops down the front door. The car doesn't start, and the monk charges silently, the ax in the air. This is not the strangest thing that has happened to Toby Peters this week. 

 

Life has been odd ever since the call came from Dalí's wife. Peters, suffering from post -- New Year's malaise, was happy to look into the theft of three of Dalí's paintings. He had no idea that the investigation might end with his face being turned into abstract art.

The Melting Clock

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 long-range bomber. Always eager to help out Uncle Sam, Toby hides Bette in a fleabag motel. After forty-eight hours together he's fantasizing about killing his client. As it turns out, someone may do it for him. 

 

The thugs track them to the hotel and escort them out at gunpoint. He'll have to crack the spy ring fast, lest this be Bette's -- and his -- final performance.

The Devil Met a Lady

To avenge a long-ago death, a killer puts Toby Peters in his sights. 

On December 10, 1938, Atlanta burned again. In the back lot at David O. Selznick's studio, sets from a dozen old pictures were pushed together and set alight to provide a backdrop for the climax of what Selznick promised to be the movie of the century: Gone with the Wind. Toby Peters, then just a studio security guard, was on hand to help keep the dozens of Confederate extras in line. When the fire was over, he found one of them dead, impaled on his own sword. 

 

Five years later, Toby scratches out a living as a private detective for Hollywood's finest, several of whom have just been marked for death. On the back of a cryptic poem is a list of names of men who were on the scene the night the extra died. Two are already dead. One is Clark Gable. The other is Toby himself.

Tomorrow Is Another Day

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 boyfriend -- nicknamed 'Fingers' because he likes to cut them off -- don't take bad news well. To protect the star's digits, Toby attempts to pass himself off as a dance instructor. For his troubles, he earns a spanking from Fingers and a promise of more pain if Astaire doesn't come around. Not long after, Luna surfaces with a cut throat, never to dance again. 

 

Toby may not be a dancer, but to escape this deadly mire he has no choice but to stay nimble and keep his feet moving.

Dancing in the Dark

A huckster repeatedly robs a comedian, leading Toby on a cross-country chase. 

The bank accounts are in the names of men like Otis J. Raisincluster, Quigley E. Sneersight, and Cormorant Beecham, but any comedy connoisseur knows that names that nonsensical could come only from the twisted brain of W. C. Fields. When toiling on the vaudeville circuit, the acid-tongued comic actor opened a new account in every town he played, adding up to a mountain of bankbooks and nearly a million dollars squirreled away in banks across the country. When a burglar makes off with a stack of the books, Fields hires private investigator Toby Peters to protect his nest egg. Toby's going on a road trip, and Fields wants to come along for the ride. 

 

As the trail winds through the nation's smallest towns, complications pop up in the form of the Amish, John Barrymore, and the Ku Klux Klan. If the thief doesn't kill Toby Peters, W. C. Fields's ceaseless shtick might.

A Fatal Glass of Beer

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 the fathers of the innumerable young women Chaplin has deflowered have all threatened the 'Little Tramp.' But now someone has broken into Chaplin's house with a long knife, telling him to quit making movies and leave Fiona Sullivan alone. Chaplin has never heard of Fiona, and wants Toby to find out why he's supposed to stay away. 

 

Toby Peters is about to learn a lesson Chaplin learned years ago: If you want to stay alive in Los Angeles, keep your mouth shut.

A Few Minutes Past Midnight

A simple job turns treacherous when Toby Peters stumbles upon a corpse. 

It's a lucky thing that Cary Grant once trained as an acrobat, because Toby Peters's life is in the actor's hands. As the two men sprint through the pitch-dark woods, trying to elude the man with the gun, they come to a canyon ledge. With nowhere to go but down, they scramble over the side. Peters slips, and Grant grabs hold of his wrist. As the killer closes in, Cary's grip begins to falter. 

 

The job began simply. Grant hired the Hollywood detective as a bagman in a blackmailing hand-off. He gives Toby a satchel full of cash, to be exchanged for an envelope of the leading man's secrets -- not sexual or financial, but details of his work for the British crown. When the envelope bearer winds up dead, Toby and Cary dive into a complex plot of murder, money, and Nazi spies, which ends with them trapped in an all-too-literal cliffhanger.

To Catch a Spy

Toby tries to clear a dentist accused of a medieval murder. 

Though an otherwise unremarkable woman, Mildred Minck has the distinction of being the first citizen of Los Angeles to be murdered by crossbow. The police find her dentist husband, Sheldon, standing over the body with the weapon, swearing that only Joan Crawford can identify the real killer. An insanity defense seems a natural fit, but Sheldon wants his neighbor, private investigator Toby Peters, to prove his innocence. The dentist is telling the truth about one thing: Joan Crawford was there. 

 

The silver screen beauty is in the middle of a comeback, and begs Toby to keep her name out of it. She points Toby towards the Survivors of the Future, a merry band of crackpot survivalists that the dentist was hoping to join. Sheldon's new friends want him sprung, but only because they want him dead.

Mildred Pierced

Toby and his brother team up to protect a magician from disappearing for good. 

In the six years since he lost his job working security at the Warner Brothers' lot, private investigator Toby Peters has taken cases from oddballs ranging from Peter Lorre to W. C. Fields. But none of them had the stage presence of Harry Blackstone, the greatest magician in the world. When an anonymous rival demands the illusionist reveal his secrets on stage or suffer the consequences, Blackstone hires Toby and his brother, ex-cop Phil, to run security at the show. 

 

What starts as a simple protection job turns dicey when Toby finds himself onstage, with a possibly unsafe magic saw about to slice through his midsection. Bodies pile up around the act, and the two detectives begin to think that the killer isn't a jealous member of the Los Angeles Friends of Magic, but rather the great magician himself.

The Toby Peters Mysteries - 책 시리즈

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