Bullet for a Star (The Toby Peters Mysteries) [Kindle Edition]

Stuart M. Kaminsky (Author)

Book Description

Hollywood detectiveToby 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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Reminiscent of Chandler.” —Publishers Weekly

 

“Peters is a good guy with a sense of humor, and every appearance he makes is a welcome one.” —Booklist

 

“Marvelously entertaining.” —Newsday

 

“Kaminsky came to detective fiction from academia, but the ease of his prose was anything but academic.” —The Guardian

 

“If you like your mysteries Sam Spade tough, with tongue-in-cheek and a touch of the theatrical, then the Toby Peters series is just your ticket.” —Houston Chronicle

 

“Kaminsky has a delightfully original mind enriching—rather than just borrowing from—an old literary form.” —Los Angeles Times

 

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

From AudioFile

Toby Peters is hired by Warner Brothers to find out who is blackmailing Errol Flynn. Lane's portrayal of Peters is picture perfect. His gruff, matter-of-fact voice characterizes the hard-boiled investigator very well. Lane's pace is fast-moving, keeping up with the action and suspenseful climax of the story. M.E.M. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Product Details

• File Size: 411 KB
• Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road (December 13, 2011)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0060OEKP6
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,233 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 43 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Bullet for a Star April 9, 2012

By S Riaz TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Kindle Edition

I remember reading these books when they were first released, so I was delighted to see that they are now available on kindle. This is the first in the Toby Peters mysteries, where we meet our hero. He was fired from the Warner Brothers lot for breaking a screen cowboys arm four years ago and is now scratching out a living as a PI in Hollywood.

It is the summer of 1940 and a distant war is making itself heard, but business is pretty much as usual in Hollywood. Someone has mailed the stuio a picture of Errol Flynn in a compromising position with a very young girl. He insists it is a fake, but the studio are not taking any chances, especially as Flynn is the middle of delicate divorce proceedings, and Toby is sent to deliver the blackmailer $5,000 and return with the photo and the negative. Sounds like a simple swop, but then Toby finds himself knocked out, in a room with a dead man - and only the corner of the photo he held for a few moments clutched in his hand.

There then follows a wonderful chase around the Hollywood hills, searching for the negative - which Toby manages to locate and lose on at least two seperate occasions. He is knocked out, shot, beaten up and seduced in his search. This whole novel is great fun with a likeable hero, fun cameos (Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, etc) and a wonderfully unconcerned, heroic and dashing Errol Flynn, whose idea of going into hiding is to check into a hotel and tuck himself up with a few women and room service! This novel ends with a call for help from Judy Garland, so I think I will go and re-read Book 2. If you haven't read these before, you are really in for a treat.

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best! March 31, 2012

By Andrea Lynne

Format:Kindle Edition

Toby Peters and his world are just the best! I am so glad that this series finally showed up in Kindle version. I read them at the library and bought a few beatup titles of this rich series via the used book market. (The original paperback versions have much better covers, I hate these ~ should have used something like the Kerry Greenwood's Phryne Fisher mysteries' terrific vintage covers)

Toby Peters and his time period (pre / during WW2 Los Angeles) are just fascinating. Heck, his landlady alone is worth the purchase. Kaminsky makes you feel the time period, with its immediate mix of rationing, war, noir LA, and Hollywood ~ his characters walk the walk and talk the talk. It feels like W. C. Fields or Harry Blackstone or Dashiell Hammett just come to life through the pages. THANK YOU Mysterious Press for making these available as e-books, much much easier to store than my well loved paper copies.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars 1940s Hollywood July 5, 2012

By L.I. LINDA

Format:Kindle Edition

I love mysteries and I love reading about the 40s. This book was an excellent combination of the two.Toby Peters could be played by anyone of a number of actors of the period.this book could have been a film noir movie.

More 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.