Stuart M. Kaminsky (1934-2009) was one of the most prolific crime fiction authors of the last four decades. Born in Chicago, Kaminsky penned more than sixty novels over his lifetime. 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. He died in St. Louis in 2009.
*Starred Review* A woman named Mildred is pierced by a bolt from a crossbow in a public park; Joan Crawford, out on an errand before she begins filming Mildred Pierce, witnesses the killing. So, Kaminski's punny title for the twenty-third Toby Peters mystery perfectly captures the ridiculous (in the best sense of the term) cross-cutting between detection and movie lore that has long been the hallmark of this series. Peters' career as an ex-cop-current private eye spans a fascinating chunk of Hollywood movie history, from the Depression--Murder on the Yellow Brick Road (1977), in which Peters took on the case of an allegedly murderous Munchkin--into World War II. Now, it's June 1944. Toby is still figuring out the ration points for his boardinghouse landlady and renting office space from the dentist Sheldon Minck. It's Minck who's in trouble, big time, because he admits shooting the crossbow that killed his wife but insists it was another of his many klutzy accidents. Peters is working for both Minck, who hires him to help prove his innocence, and Joan Crawford, who hires him to keep her name out of the papers. As Peters investigates, he is pulled into a bizarre world of survivalists who want Minck dead and, once again, into the bizarre world of Hollywood infighting. Kaminsky stands out as a subtle historian, unobtrusively but entertainingly weaving into the story itself what people were wearing, eating, driving, and listening to on the radio. A page-turning romp. Connie Fletcher
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