Customer Reviews

The Devil Met a Lady (Toby Peters Mysteries)

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Judging from the number of used copies of this book on sale for just pennies, other readers shared similar reactions: That they found The Devil Met A Lady to be quite a disappointment. Kaminsky continues the (dubious) trend of casting historical figures in fictional adventures by building a mystery, involving wartime espionage, around an attempt to blackmail Bette Davis. But the character that emerges is more that of a dull drag queen doing Davis than of the Fourth Warner Brother. And the sleuth, Toby Peters, solves cases with the help of a vaudevillian network of friends and acquaintances like fortune-tellers, little people and, well, BIG people. The plotting is pretty last ditch, with coincidences aplenty and saviors unexpectedly turning up where it's unlikely they'd be (the "mystery" proves little more than an afterthought). And while a light tone is one thing, The Devil Met A Lady -- the title's a play on the 1936 Davis version of The Maltese Falcon, Satan Met A Lady -- lacks the edge and precision to be a campy romp.

The late Stuart M. Kaminsky took his love of film and mystery to Hollywood when he created the Toby Peters series. THE DEVIL METS A LADY may have been written to fulfill a contract because it doesn't have the pace of others in the series.
Toby is called upon to protect Miss Davis by her husband and to also locate a recording an associate made of Miss D., a lover and her then husband.
The existence of the recording is a threat to her career and the Nazi's want the plans to a gun mount her current husband is designing.
A sleazy hotel is their hiding place, but the bad guys seem to know their every move.
Nash Black, author of QUALIFYING LAPS.