Bullet for a Star

Hollywood detective Toby Peters does a job for one of Tinseltown’s finest.

It’s been four years since security guard Toby Peters got fired from the Warner Brothers lot for breaking a screen cowboy’s arm. Since then he’s scratched out a living as a private detective - missing persons and bodyguard work, mostly - but now his old friends, the Warners, have a job for him.

Someone has mailed the studio a picture of Errol Flynn caught in a compromising position with a very young girl. Although Flynn insists it’s a fake, the studio is taking no chances. Toby is to deliver the blackmailer $5,000 and return with the photo negative. It should be simple, but Flynn, a swashbuckler on and off the screen, has a way of making things complicated. Though he isn’t impressed by movie stars, if Toby Peters isn’t careful he may end up dying for one.

About the Author:

Stuart M. Kaminsky (1934-2009) was one of the most prolific crime fiction authors of the last four decades. Born in Chicago, he spent his youth immersed in pulp fiction and classic cinema - two forms of popular entertainment which he would make his life’s work. After college and a stint in the army, Kaminsky wrote film criticism and biographies of the great actors and directors of Hollywood’s Golden Age. In 1977, when a planned biography of Charlton Heston fell through, Kaminsky wrote Bullet for a Star, his first Toby Peters novel, beginning a fiction career that would last the rest of his life.

Kaminsky penned twenty-four novels starring the detective, whom he described as „the anti-Philip Marlowe.” In 1981’s Death of a Dissident, Kaminsky debuted Moscow police detective Porfiry Rostnikov, whose stories were praised for their accurate depiction of Soviet life. His other two series starred Abe Lieberman, a hardened Chicago cop, and Lew Fonseca, a process server. In all, Kaminsky wrote more than sixty novels. He died in St. Louis in 2009.

Review quote:

“For anyone with a taste for old Hollywood B-movie mysteries, Edgar winner Kaminsky offers plenty of nostalgic fun . . . The tone is light, the pace brisk, the tongue firmly in cheek.” - Publishers Weekly.

„Marvelously entertaining.” - Newsday.

“Makes the totally wacky possible . . . Peters [is] an unblemished delight.” - Washington Post.

„Impressive. . . . Kaminsky has staked a claim to a piece of the Russian turf. . . . He captures the Russian scene and characters in rich detail.” - The Washington Post Book World.

“Quite simply the best cop to come out of the Soviet Union since Martin Cruz Smith’s Arkady Renko in Gorky Park.” - The San Francisco Examiner.

"Stuart Kaminsky’s Rostnikov novels are among the best mysteries being written.” - The San Diego Union-Tribune.