A Few Minutes Past Midnight (Hardcover)

In each of the series Toby Peters is hired by a person famous in the 1930s or 1940s. Among his clients have been Salvatore Dali, the Marx Brothers, Eleanor Roosevelt, W.C. Fields and Humphrey Bogart. In this book, Charlie Chaplin hires Toby Peters to find out who is threatening the life of the clown genius. In every case, the famous person is great fun.

The plots are more or less the same in each book, but somehow they feel new. At least, they feel okay. The atmosphere and the characters are what the reader finds interesting. Peters has a semi-deaf landlady who thinks he is an exterminator and book editor. In the same rooming house is a midget who works as a literary translater. Peters rents office space with an incompetent dentist who smokes cigars as he tortures unsuspecting patients. An ex-pornographer has offices upstairs. A mechanic known as "no neck" works on the detective's car. Peters wanders through a world of greasy restaurants, partiaking of tacos and Pepsi. He listens to period radio shows and drives a Crosley. It is a wonderful world of nostalgia, jeopardy, and humor. There is no one quite like Kaminsky, and I would recommend his books to any mystery reader.

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!