Stuart M. Kaminsky

Stuart M. Kaminsky is author of 50 published novels, 5 biographies, 4 textbooks and 35 short stories. He also has screenwriting credits on four produced films. He is a past president of the Mystery Writers of America and has been nominated for six prestigious Edgar Allen Poe Awards including one for his short story "Snow" in 1999. He won an Edgar for his novel A COLD RED SUNRISE, which was also awarded the Prix De Roman D'Aventure of France. He has been nominated for both a Shamus Award and a McCavity Readers Choice Award.

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STUART M. KAMINSKY: 1934-2009 Chicago author of detective novels His characters lived in city, LA, Moscow, Florida

Chicago Tribune (IL) - October 13, 2009

Stuart M. Kaminsky, a writer of impressive range who created four distinctive detectives for series set in Los Angeles, Chicago, Moscow and Florida, joined the elite of his craft in 2006 when the Mystery Writers of America named him a Grand Master.

A native of Chicago's West Side who decamped for Sarasota, Fla., in 1989 but maintained ties to his hometown, Mr. Kaminsky, 75, died of complications from hepatitis and a recent stroke Friday, Oct. 9, in Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, said his son Peter.

Starting with "Bullet for a Star" in 1977, Mr. Kaminsky wrote more than 70 novels. He incorporated the names of his two sons for his first lead character, Toby Peters, a former movie lot security officer who prowled 1940s Hollywood on behalf of celebrity clients like Errol Flynn and Peter Lorre.

Leads in subsequent series were taken by Porfiry Rostnikov, a police inspector in Moscow; Abe Lieberman, a crusty but wise Chicago cop who works the streets with his younger partner, Bill Hanrahan; and Lew Fonesca, a former Cook County state's attorney investigator now operating as a cut-rate private eye in Sarasota.

Mr. Kaminsky, who from 1972 until 1989 taught in the radio television and film program at Northwestern University, also wrote nonfiction books on film directors Don Siegel ("Dirty Harry"), Ingmar Bergman and John Huston, and actor-director Clint Eastwood.

He supplied the dialogue for Sergio Leone's gangland epic "Once Upon a Time in America" and produced harrowing thrillers like "When the Dark Man Calls" and "Exercise in Terror." He also wrote novelized versions of the television shows "The Rockford Files" and "CSI."

"He was incredibly productive as a writer, always exploring new forms and new ways to tell stories," said Chicago mystery writer Sara Paretsky, who credits Mr. Kaminsky with giving her career an early boost.

Always generous with fledgling writers, Mr. Kaminsky was a former president of the Mystery Writers of America and was active with the group's Midwest chapter. For a number of years, he spoke at annual "Dark and Stormy Night" workshops for mystery writers, said Chicago novelist Barbara D'Amato.

"He did talk a lot about structure and plotting," D'Amato said. "He was careful to say they needed to work at it, write and rewrite, and there is no magic."

In fall 1979, Paretsky attended his class on "Writing Detective Fiction for Publication" at Northwestern. He encouraged her to set her novels in the financial world because that's the field she was in at the time, read her manuscript and provided a connection to his agent and publishers.

"I don't think it's overstating it to say I owe my career to him," said Paretsky, author of 13 novels featuring female private investigator V.I. Warshawski.

"A Cold Red Sunrise," part of the Porfiry Rostnikov series, won the 1989 Edgar Award for best novel from the Mystery Writers of America. As a Grand Master Award winner, Mr. Kaminsky is among luminaries of the genre including Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler and Elmore Leonard.

Mr. Kaminsky graduated from Marshall High School and got a bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois, starting at the downstate campus and finishing in Chicago, his son said.

He was an Army medic in the 1950s, when his family believes he got hepatitis C.

He worked as a photographer with a Milwaukee newspaper, did university public relations and wrote for obscure trade publications. In 1972, he received his doctorate from Northwestern's School of Speech.

An early novel was rejected as pretentious by an agent who told him he should stick to writing textbooks, his son said.

"He stopped trying to write something moving and meaningful and important and just (went with) what was fun to write," his son said. "It worked."

Mr. Kaminsky's first marriage ended in divorce, but he later married again.

Other survivors include his wife, Enid Perll; another son, Toby; two daughters, Lucy and Natasha; his mother, Dorothy; a sister, Sara Rashkow; and three grandchildren.

Services were held in St. Louis.

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Stuart M. Kaminsky, at 75; was prolific mystery novelist

Boston Globe, The (MA) - October 18, 2009

Author: Margalit Fox New York Times

NEW YORK - Stuart M. Kaminsky, a film scholar-turned-detective novelist who was widely known for his prodigious output, complex characters, and rich evocations of time and place, including Hollywood in its Golden Age, died Friday in St. Louis. He was 75.

The cause was hepatitis C, which Mr. Kaminsky contracted as an Army medic in the late 1950s, his wife, Enid Perll, said.

A longtime resident of Sarasota, Fla., Mr. Kaminsky moved to St. Louis in March to await a liver transplant.

Shortly after moving there, he had a stroke, making him ineligible for the transplant.

The author of more than 60 crime novels, Mr. Kaminsky typically wrote two or more books a year.

A past president of Mystery Writers of America, he was named a Grand Master, the organization's highest honor, in 2006.

Mr. Kaminsky made his mystery debut in 1977 with "Bullet for a Star." The novel introduced Toby Peters, a down-at-the-heels private eye in the 1930s and '40s. The setting is Hollywood, and the client is Errol Flynn, who is being blackmailed.

Reviewing the novel in The New York Times Book Review, Harold C. Schonberg, writing as Newgate Callendar, called it "good, clean fun," adding: "When the film buffs finish reading it, there will not be a dry eye in the house."

Later books in the series also featured real-life luminaries. In "Murder on the Yellow Brick Road" (1977), Judy Garland brings in Peters to solve the murder of a Munchkin on the MGM lot.

In "To Catch a Spy" (2002), Peters aids Cary Grant. "Mildred Pierced" (2003), in which a woman is shot with a crossbow, naturally features Joan Crawford.

Mr. Kaminsky created and sustained three other series characters.

Abe Lieberman, a 60-ish, intensely moral Chicago police officer beset by family troubles made his first appearance in "Lieberman's Folly" (1991) and went on to star in "Lieberman's Choice" (1993) and "Not Quite Kosher" (2002), among other titles.

Lew Fonseca, a depressive process server working in Sarasota, is the star of a series that includes "Vengeance" (1999), "Retribution" (2001), and "Bright Futures" (2009).

A philosophical Moscow police detective, Porfiry Rostnikov is a lone wolf who adores, covertly, the crime novels of Ed McBain.

The series, which takes Rostnikov from the Soviet era to the present, includes "Death of a Dissident" (1981), "Murder on the Trans-Siberian Express" (2001), and "A Cold Red Sunrise" (1988), for which Mr. Kaminsky won an Edgar Award in 1989.

Stuart Melvin Kaminsky was born in Chicago on Sept. 29, 1934.

Entering the University of Illinois on a soccer scholarship, he earned a bachelor's degree in journalism in 1957, followed by a master's in English literature in 1959.

In 1972, he received a doctorate in film studies from Northwestern University, writing his dissertation on the director Don Siegel.

Joining the Northwestern faculty, Mr. Kaminsky taught film there until 1989. Afterward, he was the first director of the Graduate Film Conservatory at Florida State University, a position he held till 1994, when he left academia to write full time.

Mr. Kaminsky's first marriage, to Merle Gordon, ended in divorce. Besides his wife, Perll, whom he married in 1987, he leaves his mother, Dorothy; a sister, Sara Rashkow; two sons and a daughter from his first marriage, Peter, Toby, and Lucy; a daughter, Natasha, from his marriage to Perll; and three grandchildren.

His other books include nonfiction titles about cinema, among them "American

Film Genres: Approaches to a Critical Theory of Popular Film" (1974); "Clint Eastwood" (1974); "John Huston, Maker of Magic" (1978); and "Basic Filmmaking" (1981), with Dana H. Hodgdon.

Mr. Kaminsky also worked as a screenwriter. His credits include an episode of "A Nero Wolfe Mystery," a series broadcast on A&E in 2001 and 2002.

His novels were routinely praised by critics for their tight plotting and sharp dialogue. In "The Melting Clock" (1991), for instance, Toby Peters finds himself working on behalf of a most unusual client.

In two short lines, Mr. Kaminsky captured the client's essential nature as incisively as any biographer could. "Very few people know who I am," the client, Salvador Dali, says. "And I am not one of them."