"The Dead Don't Lie"
 |
I've tried to like
Kaminsky's books.
But, I've given
up. He wastes a
lot of time on
side comments that
have little to do
with the story.
|
Stuart Kaminsky's Abe Lieberman and his partner, Bill Hanrahan, are hell or heaven bent on
making the mean streets of Chicago just a little safer.
As usual they have their hands full. Three prominent members of
the Turkish community are all brutally murdered and Lieberman works to
find out what, if anything, ties these murders together. It doesn't help
that the key to the puzzle might be an event that took place over a
century ago.
Bill Hanrahan finds himself assigned to a case where a
hospitalized chef claims to have been beaten by two people and shot by a
third, a bespectacled Chinese man. As Bill digs deeper he finds himself
at odds with an old nemesis, a man who has an unusual affinity for
Bill's Asian wife.
Both men struggle to do the right thing even if it means bending the letter if not the spirit of the law.
Illusion gets more deadly than reality on Toby Peters's 24th outing from Edgar-winning author Stuart M. Kaminsky. A string of star-studded successes—most recently with Cary Grant in To Catch a Spy and an edgy Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierced—has won Tinseltown detective Toby Peters a bit of local celebrity, and that's something his new client, Harry Blackstone, understands.
At the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles, Blackstone is billed as the World's Greatest Living Magician. Of course, should the giant buzz saw in the climax to Blackstone's act cut the beautiful young woman in fact in half, his sterling reputation would be ruined.
And someone among the Los Angeles Friends of Magic is decidedly intent upon ruining it—whatever the price, including the life of Toby's prime suspect. Unfortunately, with the corpse count mounting, the evidence is pointing increasingly to Toby's client as the man behind the murders.
As always, adding to the wackiness of Toby's investigation are the ungentle dentist Sheldon Minck, wrestler-poet Jeremy Butler, the suave, small-statured Swiss multilingualist Gunter Wherthman, and daffy Mrs. Plaut. But to solve the case, Toby finds he needs someone else—the dashing star of the movie A Thousand and One Nights, Cornel Wilde.
"People Who Walk in Darkness"
In "People Who Walk in Darkness," Rostnikov travels to Siberia to investigate a murder at a diamond mine, where he discovers an old secret…and an even older personal problem.
His compatriots head to Kiev on a trail of smuggled diamonds and kidnapped guest workers, and what they discover leads them to a vast conspiracy that not only has international repercussions but threatens them on a very personal level.
"Not Quite Kosher"
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Didn't move fast
enough for me.
A bit too much
Jewish humor.
|
From tracking a pair of low-rent thieves who stumble into a heist way over their heads to finding out what happened to a man who predicted his own death in a bizarre twist of fate, not to mention planning for a grandson's bar mitzvah that threatens to send him to the poorhouse, Lieberman will do much to find a way to make everything right, even if it takes years off his life.
And his Irish partner, Bill Hanrahn, the Priest to Lieberman's Rabbi, is in trouble of his own making. For the woman he loves is the object of affection of one of the kingpins of the Asian crime syndicate in Chicago and the notion of this woman marrying anyone from a different culture is anathema. How far will he go to win the woman he loves? And at what cost?
Just another day in the lives of a pair of Chicago's most amiably odd detective team . . .
"Always Say Goodbye"
Four years ago, Lew Fonesca’s wife Catherine was struck and killed in a hit-and-run. Grief-stricken, he fled Chicago and wound up in Sarasota, Florida where he’s made a living as a process server.
Four years on, he's still savoring his depression like fine wine, and his therapist--and sparring partner--has had enough. It's time, she tells Lew, to get on with his life. Time to go back to Chicago and find out what really happened to his wife. Lew hates to admit it, but Ann Horowitz might be right.
Even if it kills him, he has to know the truth about his wife's death. So he returns to his home, his family, his friends--and a mystery. He's resolved to dig until he finds out who killed his wife. In doing so, he'll uncover both sweet and painful memories of his past. He'll also confront a murderer who'll not hesitate to kill again to make sure hidden secrets stay buried.
"Always Say Goodbye"
Four years on, he's still savoring his depression like fine wine, and his therapist--and sparring partner--has had enough. It's time, she tells Lew, to get on with his life. Time to go back to Chicago and find out what really happened to his wife. Lew hates to admit it, but Ann Horowitz might be right.
Even if it kills him, he has to know the truth about his wife's death. So he returns to his home, his family, his friends--and a mystery. He's resolved to dig until he finds out who killed his wife. In doing so, he'll uncover both sweet and painful memories of his past. He'll also confront a murderer who'll not hesitate to kill again to make sure hidden secrets stay buried.
His first series, featuring the shabby private eye Toby Peters, was set in 1940s Hollywood and reflected that era's light-hearted, fast-paced crime stories. Kaminsky came to detective fiction from academia, but the ease of his prose was anything but academic, belying the scholarship behind his work and the depth of his characterisation.
He was born on Chicago's west side. He inherited his love of detective fiction from his father, who devoured pulp mystery magazines. He was drafted after high school and served as a medic in France. After graduating from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and periods working in public relations and as a photographer for a Milwaukee newspaper, he received his PhD in 1972 from Northwestern University.
His dissertation was on the film director Don Siegel, which began a long friendship. Kaminsky taught in the new film program at Northwestern and published biographical studies of Siegel and Clint Eastwood, as well as a groundbreaking study, American Film Genres (1974).
