Stuart M Kaminsky

To salvage his career, Rostnikov takes on a baffling bathroom murder 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 wife. But just before the deal closes, Brezhnev's death sends the nation into turmoil, and dooms...

Inspector Rostnikov is a Russian bear of a man, an honest policeman in a very dishonest post-Soviet Russia. Known as "The Washtub," Rostnikov is one of the most engaging and relevant characters in crime fiction, a sharp and caring policeman as well as the perfect tour guide to a changing (that is, disintegrating) Russia. Surviving pogroms and politburos, he has solved crimes, mostly in spite of the powers that rule his world. In People Who Walk

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Abe Lieberman: a strong, sympathetic Chicago cop. His love for his family is matched by his quiet, zealous commitment to do what is right. Sometimes he's faced with some uncomfortable ethical choices in order to see that justice-rather than the letter of the law-is meted out. Lou Fonesca: a world-weary guy, who got in a car and just started driving after his wife died and wound up in front of a Dairy Queen in Sarasota. He now makes his way amid bail...

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....

A radio therapist is haunted by her parents' killer It is 1957, and Jean Kaiser is pretending to sleep. She strains her ears to hear her parents, waiting for them to go to bed so she can indulge in her great joy-listening to the far-off radio stations that play Paul Anka, Pat Boone, and Elvis. But instead of bedtime sounds, she hears her mother's voice calling her name so strangely that Jean thinks it must be a nightmare. When she awakes in the morning,...

Carl Zwick is an aging Chicago Cubs baseball player. Sometimes he feels like he's spent his life hitting into double plays, but he's finally gotten onto the right track. Then tragedy strikes him out. Anita Mills is a pretty single black mother just trying to get by. A random act of brutality in one of Chicago's rougher neighborhoods permanently ends her struggle. Richard Allen Smith walks the streets of ChiTown saying God has sent him. He has an...

Lew Fonesca is a man who does things for people. He makes small problems go away and tries to keep the larger ones from landing his clients in jail. He finds deadbeats, errant spouses, and generally keeps the populace of Sarasota on the up and up. Now Lew is faced with one case that will try his patience...and another that may break his heart. The first involves an elderly woman who swears she's witnessed a murder in her old age home despite the...

In the Edgar Award-winning crime series featuring a veteran Moscow cop 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...