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Toby Peters is an unusual private eye. He's already cracked cases involving Humphrey Bogart, the Marx Brothers, John Wayne and Mae West, and is now gumshoeing for the celebrated screen star Charlie Chaplin. Welcome to Hollywood. Chaplin has cause for alarm. A sinister visitor wielding a large knife has not only rudely paid the movie legend a midnight call but has also threatened him with death unless he stops production on his latest project, a film in which wealthy old women are married and show more then murdered for their money. Chaplin has been warned, too, that he'd better stay away from one Fiona Sullivan. Or else. Fiona, of course, is Toby's only lead. This calls for help from Toby's team of investigators: an eccentric dentist, a former wrestler and a multilingual Swiss midget. What ensues proves to be constantly surprising, grandly wacky, increasingly suspenseful and frequently hilarious - not unlike a Chaplin movie. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
A very ordinary mystery. It seemed the client (Charlie Chaplin) did a lot of the work for the detective that he hired. Toby Peters is average at best and appeared to be too obtuse to be a Private Eye. The book was not fast paced,or even terribly exciting. It barely held my interest to the find out who did it or why. For this author, whose works I have read in the past, this is poor. Find another of his work. MOst are much much better
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Author Information
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
Series
Common Knowledge
- Original title
- A Few Minutes Past Midnight
- Original publication date
- 2001
- People/Characters
- Toby Peters
- Dedication
- This book is dedicated to Alysha, Allison and Bill Wargo
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 75
- Popularity
- 419,417
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.83)
- Languages
- English, German
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 11
- ASINs
- 2
