From Publishers Weekly
Appearing for the 19th time, down-and-out Hollywood detective Toby Peters teams up with Clark Gable in this fast-paced and colorful addition to a very successful series. In 1943, after the movie star receives a poem linking him to a series of deaths (some projected), he hires the detective, whose name was written on the same sheet of paper as the poem, to investigate. Toby is unable to prevent the next killing. Further messages lead to more deaths, with all the victims having one thing in common-they had been extras in Gone with the Wind five years previously during the burning of Atlanta scene when another extra had been killed with a sword. The death had been covered up by the studio. Aided by his usual crew-midget Gunther Wherthman, landlord Jeremy Butler and dentist Sheldon Minck-Toby aims to beat the killer to other potential victims. At the same time, he tries to protect the extremely depressed Gable, who hasn't recovered from the death of his wife, Carole Lombard, the previous year and who resists Toby's attempts to stash him in a safe place. Kaminsky's masterful tale is funny, warm and powerfully moving.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Kaminsky's latest in his popular Toby Peters series features the coolheaded, part-time sleuth facing one of his toughest cases yet. Set during World War II, when Hollywood was at its most glamorous, the plot involves the mysterious stabbing death of an extra on the set of Selznick International's
Gone with the Wind. Five years after the murder, the debonair Clark Gable approaches Toby to ask for help--seems Gable's been receiving bizarre death threats in the form of poems. He figures the threats are real, especially when several other actors who worked on the picture--and who may have witnessed the murder--turn up dead. Fortunately, Toby is a gifted gumshoe who keeps plugging away until he unravels the confounding case and saves the dashing Gable from an ignoble end. Nostalgic readers with a yen for the good old days--when men were men and movies were
movies--will find Kaminsky's story entertaining, clever, eminently readable, and chock-full of snippets from Hollywood's Golden Age.
Emily Melton
