Think Fast, Mr. Peters

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. 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. "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." - Booklist. "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. "The Ed McBain of Mother Russia." - Kirkus Reviews.