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A PI performs some fancy footwork to protect Fred Astaire as "Edgar winner Kaminsky effortlessly choreographs Hollywood history . . . and dirty doings" (Publishers Weekly).Sometimes fools must step in where Fred Astaire fears to tap.
Luna Martin, the moll of a well-known Los Angeles gangster nicknamed "Fingers" (because he likes to cut them off), has demanded dance lessons from Hollywood's finest hoofer—and whatever Luna wants, Luna gets.
To sidestep the flirtations of the lead-footed show more lady, Astaire hires private investigator Toby Peters to pose as a dance instructor and take over the lessons. But when someone cuts in and cuts Luna's throat, the grieving gangster makes Peters an offer he can't refuse: Find the killer—or go from having two left feet to one foot in the grave.
Now, instead of punishing the parquet, the silver screen's most famous song-and-dance man is pounding the pavement with his new partner—a rumpled, middle-aged gumshoe who just wants to live to shuffle through another day . . .
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126+ Works 7,303 Members
Stuart M. Kaminsky is head of the radio/television/film department at Northwestern University in Illinois. He is also a writer of textbooks, screenplays, and mystery novels. The more popular of his two series of detective novels features Toby Peters. Set in the 1930s and 1940s, the Peters books draw on Kaminsky's knowledge of history and love of show more film by incorporating characters from the film industry's past in nostalgic mysteries. Murder on the Yellow Brick Road (1978), for example, features Judy Garland while Catch a Falling Clown (1982) stars Emmett Kelley as Peters's client and Alfred Hitchcock as a murder suspect. His other critically acclaimed series chronicles the cases of Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov. Kaminsky's detailed studies of Russian police procedure combined with aspects of life in Russia have earned the Series an Edgar nomination for Black Knight in Red Square (1984) and the 1989 Edgar Award for A Cold Red Sunrise (1988). Stuart Kaminsky was born in Chicago in 1934 and died in 2009. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Dancing in the Dark
- Original title
- Dancing in the Dark
- Original publication date
- 1996-01; 1996
- People/Characters
- Toby Peters; Luna Martin; Tobias Leon "Toby Peters" Pevsner; Arthur "Fingers Intaglia" Forbes; Lou Canton; Kudlap Singh (show all 63); Cotton Wright; Manny; Irene Plaut; Sheldon Minck; Anthony Pelligrino; Barbara Sullivan; Daniel Sullivan; Herschel Good; Violet Gonsenelli; Anne Mitzenmacher Peters Howard; Fred Astaire; Phyllis Astaire; Giuseppi Cortona; Vera Davis; Jeremy Butler; Alice Pallice; Natasha Butler; Preston Stewart; Asher Cain; Butterfly McQueen; Pook Hurawitz; Jerry Rogasinian; Anita Maloney; Ozzie Shaw; Lonny Shaw; Philip Martin "Phil" Pevsner; Mike Shayne; Gregg Lean; Carmen; Steve Seidman; Martin Raymond Leib; Carlotta Forbes; William Talbott; Constantine Chavez; Vivian Starbuck; Harvey Burke; Jay Buxbaum; John Cawelti; Seymour Bratz; Juanita; Harold Sumner; Mack Chirikides; Moe Schroeder; Lester Gannett; Jeannie Gannett; Lillian Gannett; Jane Withers; Allan Jones; Harry Ritz; Edith Head; Rita Hayworth; Barry Lorie; Cornel Wilde; Betty Grable; Hy; Jack Ellis; W. C. Fields
- Important places
- Los Angeles, California, USA; Glendale, California, USA; Huntington Beach, California, USA; California, USA
- Epigraph
- Good Lord I thought I was prepared
but I wasn't prepared for that.
--- Bert Williams - Dedication
- This one is for Henry Kraus, who had faith and a smile and taught me to dance. if he could teach me, he could teach Helen Keller.
- First words
- "First you put your two knees close up tight,", I said, my hands behind my back, nodding in approval as she followed my instructions.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)I hummed a few bars of "Lovely to Look At" and picked up the phone to call W. C. Fields.
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- 104
- Popularity
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- English, French, German
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- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 14
- ASINs
- 5
