From Amazon
Toby Peters has rubbed elbows with, and taken a beating for, most of the brightest stars from Hollywood's 1940s heyday. Judy Garland, Errol Flynn, Bette Davis, Charlie Chaplin--this disheveled, taco-gulping L.A. private eye has worked for them all. Usually to his regret. In Stuart M. Kaminsky's wacky but charming To Catch a Spy, he adds the terminally suave Cary Grant to his client list.
As 1943 comes to an end, with Allied bombs battering Berlin and Americans celebrating a new pork bonus among their wartime food stamps, Grant hires Peters to make a late-night swap of money for "compromising documents." ("I'm not being blackmailed over some crime or sexual indiscretion," Grant insists. "It's more important than that.") However, the mysterious messenger is shot before he can hand Peters the papers. His dying words: "George Hall." It's only the vaguest of clues, but enough to send Toby and Grant--who's working for British Intelligence Services--on a bungling chase that leads to a second corpse, a cabal of Nazi sympathizers, and a perilous confrontation on a moonlit precipice.
What's most remarkable about this 22nd Peters outing is that it's just as welcome as the first, 1977's Bullet for a Star. Kaminsky, a film historian, employs his knowledge of Tinsel Town's "golden age" to both nostalgic and comic effect. More lighthearted than 2001's A Few Minutes Past Midnight, but still featuring Kaminsky's usually suspect cast of supporting eccentrics--including Irene Plaut, Toby's addled landlady, and dentist-from-hell Shelly Minck--To Catch a Spy is Raymond Chandler by way of the Marx Brothers. --J. Kingston Pierce
From Publishers Weekly
For anyone with a taste for old Hollywood B-movie mysteries, Edgar winner Kaminsky offers plenty of nostalgic fun in his 22nd book to feature good-natured, unprepossessing sleuth Toby Peters (after 2001's A Few Minutes Past Midnight). Having solved cases for the likes of Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart and the Marx Brothers, Toby now takes on as a client Bristol's own Archibald Alexander Leach, aka Cary Grant. A note at the start explains that King George VI awarded Grant a medal in 1947 for somewhat vague services during WWII. Kaminsky supposes Grant to have been a British intelligence agent, his job to detect the activities of Nazi sympathizers in Hollywood. Married to Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton at the time, he finds more pro-Nazis among his wife's rich friends than among the acting community. Grant hires Toby, who packs a .38 with which he's unable to hit the broad side of a sound stage, to deliver a satchel of money in the dark of night to a man who'll give him an envelope in return. Need anyone ask what occurs? Shots ring out. The man Toby is to meet dies with the name "George Hall" on his lips, while Toby receives the first of many conks on the head, knocking him cold. Toby and the acrobatic Grant at his lithe best make an appealing team. The tone is light, the pace brisk, the tongue firmly in cheek. The series may be tissue thin by this point, but fans are in for a merry ride.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
(*Starred Review*) This old-fashioned cliff-hanger literally begins and ends with Cary Grant and Toby Peters, Hollywood private eye, hanging from crevices on the cliff face of Laurel Canyon as a man with a gun peers over the edge. The body of the book pulls back from the precipice, explaining, in Kaminsky's comic fashion, how the unlikely duo ended up there. This novel is worth reading even without the stunner of a plot, complete with Cary Grant, widely believed to be a special agent for the British Intelligence Services, using charm and acrobatics to help the war effort and escape the Nazis. It's worth it for the movie trivia, the details of life during the war, for Mrs. Plaut's boardinghouse, for Toby's storage-room office just off Shelley Minck's "dental chamber of mayhem," and, of course, for Kaminsky's jaunty way with dialogue and plot. Grant seeks Peters out to deliver a bag containing money in exchange for a package. The messenger is killed, but Peters uses his dying words and discovered wallet as entree into the shadowy world of espionage. Another Kaminsky winner. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
'Kaminsky's Toby Peters series, in which the ne'er do well detective interacts with the Hollywood of the late 1930s and 40s, is full of entertaining profiles and snappy patter. The period settings are reflected accurately, and the regular characters tend to reinforce Toby's own comic malaise... it's the kind of series which breeds affectionate fans, of which I am decidely one.' -- MICHAEL CARLSON CRIME TIME 'A chaotic romp with plenty of gunfire and assorted mayhem, but it is the humour that makes this series so attractive - you can feel that the author enjoys every word he writes.' TANGLED WEB
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Book Description
With a hilarious new Hollywood thriller and in the hire of the urbane, amusing screen star Cary Grant, private investigator Toby Peters continues a madcap career that has cast him as sleuth to such movie luminaries as Humphrey Bogart, the Marx Brothers, Bette Davis, Mae West, and Charlie Chaplin. Like many a movie mystery, this one begins in the middle of the night, when Toby, trying to deliver a package at Grant's behest, finds himself with a corpse on his hands, a lump on his head, and an odd message from a dying man. Now in pursuit of a murderer, Toby and Grant, who proves to be no less acrobatic than he is resourceful, follow a trail of clues that leads them eventually to a den of Nazi sympathizers and finally to a nighttime confrontation on a mountaintop with a very determined and formidably well-armed killer. As always, Toby can count on the aid of his friends: the unsanitary dentist Shelly Minck, with whom Toby shares an office; the huge wrestler-turned-poet Jerry Butler; the suave Swiss little person Gunther Whertman, who has mastered as many languages as he has skills; and Mrs. Irene Plaut, Toby's daffy but dogged landlady. As always, too, all four lend Toby their loyalty and support, although they are more likely to add to the chaos. "Kaminsky has such a good time writing, and he so loves the period, that the reader is swept along willy-nilly."—New York Times Book Review "Makes the totally wacky possible.... Peters [is] an unblemished delight."—Washington Post
About the Author
Stuart Kaminsky is the prolific, award-winning author of more than seventy novels, including ongoing series featuring Russian policeman Porfiry Rostnikov, Chicago cop Abe Liberman, Hollywood sleuth Toby Peters, and Jim Rockford of TV's Rockford Files. He lives in Florida.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
