High Midnight

By Stuart M. Kaminsky

Toby Peters tries to protect a Western star against a vicious salami-mogul.

Toby Peters is enjoying a moonlighting gig as the house detective at a hot-sheets motel when two giant men come to take him for a ride. They're Chicago toughs, visiting Los Angeles with their boss, Lombardi, who has come west to establish himself as the cold-cuts king of California. His message to Peters is simple: Stop asking questions and tell Cooper he didn't find anything. Or else.

'Cooper' is Gary Cooper, who recently hired a detective named Toby Peters to quiet a blackmailer. But that wasn't Toby -- it was the dentist who shares his office. The amateur sleuth bungled the case so badly that now they're all in danger from Lombardi, the blackmailers, and anyone else with a hot head and a .45. If Toby Peters can't sort this out quickly, the next batch of Lombardi hot dogs will be made of one hundred percent pure-ground detective.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Head of Zeus
• Release date: Jun 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781784086183

Stuart M. Kaminsky

Stuart M. Kaminsky (1934-2009) was the author of fifty novels, including the Lew Fonesca mystery series and the Toby Peters mystery series. A former president of Mystery Writers of America, Kaminsky was a recipient of the Edgar Award and the Prix de Roman D’Aventure of France. He was also nominated for the Shamus and McCavity Awards. His previous tie-in work includes two original Rockford Files novels.

Reviews for High Midnight

[hardlyhardy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"High Midnight" by Stuart Kaminsky is a winner all the way. Private investigator Toby Peter's client is none other than Hollywood star Gary Cooper, who is being pressured by a gangster to make a movie called "High Midnight" (this is before "High Noon") that Cooper doesn't want to make. Pretty soon bodies start piling up, and it is Peters who is the prime suspect after two of the bodies are found in his apartment. He must find the killer before he either gets killed himself or thrown into jail by his own brother, a Los Angeles cop.Along the way, Peters bumps into Babe Ruth and Ernest Hemingway, the latter of whom gets involved in a gun battle along with Peters and Cooper, sort of a comic gunfight at the OK Corral.

[kittman_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I've read a few of the STUART KAMINSKY books featuring TOBY PETERS primarily because It evokes the forties era. I was a little boy in the early part of that era and it holds many warm memories for me. I'm a sucker for anything written using that time period. The books themself are easy to read with familiar characters of the era thrown in.