Stuart M. Kaminsky
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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...
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On the eve of a show trial, a Soviet dissident is stabbed through the heart On a frigid night in silent Moscow, Aleksander Granovsky paces the floor of his government flat. He has dedicated his life to exposing the brutality of the Russian penal system, and in two days he will be tried for the crime of smuggling essays to the West. Granovsky is drafting a speech to deliver in court when an assassin appears and pierces his heart with the point of a...
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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...
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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....
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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...
26) A Fine Red Rain
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Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov fights to stop a vendetta against the acrobats of the Moscow circus A drunk perches atop the statue of Nikolai Gogol in Arbat Square, and police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov sighs. After years fighting to become a top detective, he has suffered a demotion to the minor crimes unit, which means the lunatic on the statue is his responsibility. But the limping policeman fails to talk the distraught man down, and with a perfect...
27) To Catch a Spy
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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...
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In trouble with the KGB, Rostnikov is sent to investigate a death in Siberia After three decades serving with the Moscow police, Porfiry Rostnikov is back at the bottom. When forced to choose between the law and the party line, he fights for justice-a disturbing preference that has won him no friends at the Kremlin. Now his enemies in the KGB have transferred him to the lowest rungs of Moscow law enforcement, a backwater department assigned with only...
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Toby Peters guards a horror icon against a gang of crazed vampire enthusiasts Coffins fill the basement of a crumbling Los Angeles movie theater. Five vampires crowd around fading horror idol Bela Lugosi, peppering him with questions. A malfunctioning plastic fang causes one of the undead-wannabes to lisp. The effect is less than fearsome, but Lugosi is terrified, for one of these oddballs has been making threats on his life. He hires Toby Peters...
30) Smart Moves
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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. ...
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Rostnikov confronts a mystery that stretches from Moscow to the stars Once, Russian children wanted to be cosmonauts like Yuri Gagarin. But the Soviet Union is dead, and the days of Gagarin's glory are long passed. 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...
32) Blood and Rubles
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In post–Cold War Moscow, business is booming and crime pays Capitalism has come to Russia, and money is raining from the sky. As the trickle of cash turns to a torrent, bureaucrats become oligarchs, and the brutal Russian mafia consolidates its power. In the center of this madness is police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov, a thoughtful detective who is struggling to adjust to life in these turbulent times. A prominent businessman is kidnapped in...
33) Poor Butterfly
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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...
34) Buried Caesars
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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,...
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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...
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A terrorist at the Moscow Film Festival plots an international incident Built in the twilight of the Tsarist state, Moscow's Metropole Hotel is a poignant reminder of the decadence of the last regime. But today its corridors are musty, its rooms are dank, and now its restaurant is the scene of a quadruple murder. Four men-one American, one Japanese, and two citizens of Mother Russia-share a meal of smoked salmon, caviar, and two bottles of vodka....
37) Hard Currency
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As a serial killer terrorizes Moscow, Rostnikov gets an assignment in Havana The young girl leads her target into a park, planning on robbing him at knifepoint as soon as they are out of sight. But before she can strike, her quarry changes from a stooped middle-aged man to a feral beast, swinging a lead pipe with sadistic glee. By the time the police find the thief, her murderer is long gone. He is the first serial killer in Russian history, responsible...
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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...
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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...
40) Red Chameleon
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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...