A Few Minutes Past Midnight [Import] [Hardcover]

STUART M. KAMINSKY (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: ORION (2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 075285304X
• ISBN-13: 978-0752853048
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,634,099 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars TOBY PETERS RETURNS! FINALLY!, February 21, 2002

By 

Robert Edler "Master Of Mystery" (Saint Louis, Missouri USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Few Minutes Past Midnight (Hardcover)

I read my first Toby Peters' story twenty-five years ago. It was A BULLET FOR A STAR, and I immediately fell in love with him, the characters that surround him, the world he lives in, and with the writing of the author who created him.

During that twenty-five years, Toby has managed to star in twenty mystery adventures (each with its own celebrity guest star) while only aging five fictional years.

That is why its strange that the characters seen to have aged and changed so much in the time between this novel and previous one, A FATAL GLASS OF BEER. Maybe, the war or personal concerns are wearing them down. Or maybe it's the fact that the Golden Era of Hollywood is winding to a close. Or maybe, we, the readers and the author, are just growing old. I hope not, Toby Peters exists in a time warp that Stuart Kaminsky, his creator was always able to capture so perfectly. Besides, I still have hopes that someone in television will finally realize that Toby's adventures would make a GREAT television series.

Anyway, return to a wartime Hollywood in 1943 - Charlie Chaplin is Toby's latest co-star and client - and it seems as if someone has borrowed the plot of Lady Killer, Chaplin's latest movie project, for a real life murder spree. Now all Toby and his cast of supporting players (a midget, a giant and a mad dentist) have to do is catch the killer before he completes his gruesome project.

While this book was not up to par with earlier Toby Peter's adventures, I still enjoyed it and I encourage you to give it a try and meet Toby and his associates. By the way, though Toby does not meet his next client at the end of this book as he usually does, I understand that the next adventure will co-star the lord of the jungle himself, Johnny Weismuller. And I can't wait!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wish I liked it more, August 23, 2001

By 

Joseph S. Walker "Jazzman99" (Somewhere, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Few Minutes Past Midnight (Hardcover)

I've read all of Stuart Kaminsky's mysteries, but I started with the Toby Peters series, and I reread several of them frequently. It's been quite a few years since the last entry in the series--the excellent "A Fatal Glass of Beer"--an I was beginning to wonder is Kaminsky had simply lost interest in Peters. Admittedly, the Peters books are often slight affairs. Kaminsky's Rostnikov and Leiberman books, while displaying the same talent for colorful characters and fast-moving plots, are weightier, and present a coherent--if often melancholy--worldview.

This long-awaited return to the Peters series suggests, I think, that Kaminsky is having trouble getting back into the more light-hearted spirit of the earlier books. The usual wonderful characters are all here, but they're aging; Shelly is depressed, Gunther may soon move away, Jeremy's wife is getting more and more concerned about his health. Toby's brother Phil and his ex-wife Ann are showing the years, too, and the weary resignation that has always been present in the Rostnikov books is now almost as dominant here.

Don't get me wrong--I enjoyed the book, I recommend the book, and I'm happy to see these characters again. But it seems appropriate that the celebrity guest here is Chaplin, whose humor has always been tinged with pathos and an awareness of mortality. I have to wonder if this is Kaminsky's farewell to his first series character.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Return of the Peters, July 18, 2001

By 

S. Berner (Cocoa, Fl USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: A Few Minutes Past Midnight (Hardcover)

At last! A new "Toby Peters". I've been a fan since the first ("Bullet for a Star") and have every last one except "You Bet Your Life" (which has been stolen from me... twice!) in first editions. Sure, Kaminsky writes other books of greater depth and more realistic characters. Sure, the Peters books are formula. And, sure, we get idealized portraits of the movie stars Peters deals with, instead of anything resembling in-depth studies of them that we might expect from film-historian Kaminsky. But, so what! For pure unadulterated FUN there has never been a series to equal it! If you're a film fan, hell, if you've ever seen a movie made before 1980, you're gonna love this one (and all the others in the series). Keep up the good work Mr. K., and fergoshsakes, let's not have another half decade between adventures!