Bullet for a Star

My summer reading project has two prongs to it. The first is to read three great comic novels (Catch-22, Slaughterhouse Five, and A Confederacy of Dunces) and the second is to read the entire Toby Peters series by the late Stuart M. Kaminsky. Kaminsky was a very prolific mystery writer, creating no fewer than four distinct series. Of these, Toby Peters was his first and longest running.

The premise is simple, Toby is a private investigator in 1940s Hollywood. Thie means he gets to interact with all kinds of movie and entertainment types. It is very reminiscent of Max Allan Collins' Heller books, except Kaminsky was there first. Another big difference between the series is the lack of modern context to the Peters series. The Heller books are written in a memoir form that updates the reader on the various characters' fates. Peters simply moves on from one mystery to the next. In the case of this book, quite literally from this story to the next. Our hero rushes off at the end to begin his next case, much like the Hardy Boy books of my youth.

Our hero is introduced in this first novel as a former Warner Brothers security man turned private investigator. He isn't very successful at his job. He rents an office (really just a spare room) from a dentist; he barely speaks to his brother (a cop) or his ex-wife; his car is falling apart, and he is evicted from his apartment. But he knows how the movie business works and uses that knowledge to his advantage.

The series is light in tone, but also practices that deceptively simple prose that reads well, but is hard to imitate. Kaminsky keeps the book flowing and interesting. My only quibble is that the solution was a bit afield. The killer is well-drawn in the novel, but the connections to the plot are not cemented down. Thus making the denouement a little hard to put together. I don't want to figure out the mystery easily, but I don't want the solution pulled out with no connection either.

I've read a few of these books in the past, and look forward to seeing the evolution over 24 novels and 27 years. Amazingly all but two books are at my local library and those two are in a neighboring system. I love my library.