Tue 4 Aug 2020
Archived PI Mystery Review: STUART KAMINSKY – Never Cross a Vampire.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[11] Comments
STUART KAMINSKY – Never Cross a Vampire. Toby Peters #5. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1980. Mysterious Press, paperback, 1984, 1995. ibooks, paperback, 2000.
As a flight into the past, Stuart Kaminsky’s series of adventures starring Hollywood private eye Toby Peters has come now to be a regularly scheduled event. As in his previous four cases, this affair, which introduces both Bela Legosi and aspiring screenwriter William Faulkner as clients, is fairly dripping with nostalgia. With a capital N.
The time is January 1942, just as the US was gearing up for its mammoth forthcoming war effort, and every so often we are obliged to sit down and listen to Peters recite his breakfast menu, brand name by brand name, and to read his newspaper along with him, item by item.
This litany of places, names, and events, while marginally interesting, becomes very much suspect, however, the moment Peters mentions having listened to a program on the popular radio series Suspense. As it so happens, the first program in the series, which lasted until 1962, or some twenty years, was not broadcast until June 17, 1942, or not until six months after the events related here.
Kaminsky has put more effort than usual into the plot this time, which includes, very briefly, a locked room murder, but sloppy and inaccurate time-tabling – not month and year this time, but the time of day – makes it a little difficult to do more than guess who done it.
Rating: C
The Toby Peters series (with a tip of the topper to his page on the Thrilling Detective website) —
NOVELS
Bullet for a Star (1977; Errol Flynn).
Murder on the Yellow Brick Road (1977; Judy Garland).
You Bet Your Life (1978; Marx Brothers).
The Howard Hughes Affair (1979; Howard Hughes).
Never Cross a Vampire (1980; Bela Lugosi).
High Midnight (1981; Gary Cooper).
Catch a Falling Clown (1982; Emmett Kelly).
He Done Her Wrong (1983; Mae West).
The Fala Factor (1984; Eleanor Roosevelt).
Down for the Count (1985; Joe Louis).
The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance (1986; John Wayne).
Smart Moves (1986; Albert Einstein, Paul Robeson).
Think Fast, Mr. Peters (1988; Peter Lorre).
Buried Caesars (1989; General MacArthur).
Poor Butterfly (1990; Leopold Stokowski).
The Melting Clock (1991; Salvador Dali).
The Devil Met a Lady (1993; Bette Davis).
Tomorrow Is Another Day (1995; Clark Gable).
Dancing in the Dark (1996; Fred Astaire).
A Fatal Glass of Beer (1997; W.C. Fields).
A Few Minutes Past Midnight (2001; Charlie Chaplin).
To Catch a Spy (2002; Cary Grant)
Mildred Pierced (2003, Joan Crawford)
Now You See It (2004; Harry Blackstone).
SHORT STORIES
“The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance (1984, The Eyes Have It)
“Busted Blossoms” (1986, Mean Streets)
“Long Odds” (2002, Murder on the Ropes)
“Denbow” (2009, Sex, Lies and Private Eyes)
August 4th, 2020 at 2:07 pm
I read his Cary Grant book, thought he captured the actor and the story line worked.
August 4th, 2020 at 3:24 pm
One book I’ve always meant to read is The Clark Gable and Carole Lombard Murder Case, by George Baxt. Have you read that one, Barry?
August 4th, 2020 at 2:51 pm
For me, these come a (very) distant third behind the Porfiry Rostnikov and Abe Lieberman series.
Of course, your mileage may vary.
August 4th, 2020 at 3:22 pm
Neither of his other two series sounded interesting me, without trying either one. I probably have missed a lot of good books that way over the years.
August 4th, 2020 at 3:43 pm
Steve, I have not, but I like the casting.
August 4th, 2020 at 3:46 pm
Just read some reviews on Amazon, fairly negative.
August 4th, 2020 at 7:22 pm
Baxt was another author who wrote a long list of detective novels based on the lives and careers of celebrities from the 30s and early forties. The only one I’ve read was one with Dorothy Parker as a leading character. I thought was well done; I think that Baxt and Parker may have had much the same sense of humor.
I’ve always intended to read another, but for one reason or another, I’ve never taken the time to do so. Some one the titles below are very very tempting:
The Jacob Singer series —
1. The Dorothy Parker Murder Case (1984)
2. The Alfred Hitchcock Murder Case (1986)
3. The Tallulah Bankhead Murder Case (1987)
4. The Talking Pictures Murder Case (1990)
5. The Greta Garbo Murder Case (1992)
6. The Noel Coward Murder Case (1992)
7. The Mae West Murder Case (1993)
8. The Marlene Dietrich Murder Case (1993)
9. The Bette Davis Murder Case (1994)
10. The Humphrey Bogart Murder Case (1995)
11. The William Powell and Myrna Loy Murder Case (1996)
12. The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Murder Case (1997)
13. The Clark Gable and Carole Lombard Murder Case (1997)
August 4th, 2020 at 7:06 pm
The first three Peters books were fun, but the series started to run out of steam pretty early and it became harder and harder to shoehorn the actors into the parts.
He did display some talent for capturing the actor featured in the story, and also did good portraits of Gary Cooper and Errol Flynn.
The mystery element was always a bit secondary to that.
August 4th, 2020 at 7:17 pm
I think this may have been as far as I went in the series. I rated it a “C” which is about as low as I usually gave a book that I actually finished. Not a statement that was always true, but close enough.
Besides the wrong time date for the radio show, I found all of the contemporaneous references shoehorned in, and while this is totally unfair to Kaminsky, it was as though he was showing off what he knew.
A story written now but taking place in the past should, in my opinion, be written as though it was written in the past, and not include a lot of brand names for things eaten for breakfast that we can look back on now and be amused.
I hope that makes sense.
August 4th, 2020 at 7:50 pm
Without saying anything bad about Kaminsky or the series I read them as virtual palate cleansers, sort of a mental sorbet between more serious books.
I don’t know if you have ever read a really good book and then wanted to take a mental break before starting another one, but Carter Brown served that purpose for me as did the Peters series. They were light, entertaining, undemanding, contained a few laughs and thrills and a mystery element and they weren’t going to stick in my head much beyond reading them.
That may sound harsh, but I quite enjoyed the Brown books and these without having to put much effort into them. They served that purpose admirably.
August 5th, 2020 at 8:06 am
I made it about halfway through the Toby Peter series and really enjoyed the first few books, but the period details got too heavy-handed and started taking me out of the stories.
“A story written now but taking place in the past should, in my opinion, be written as though it was written in the past”. That sums it up for me, too, Steve.