Wed 14 Sep 2011
STUART KAMINSKY – You Bet Your Life. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1978. Paperback reprints: Charter Book, 1980; Mysterious Press, 1990.
Hollywood private eye Toby Peters, whose previous clients have included the likes of Errol Flynn and Judy Garland, now heads for Chicago, to settle some gambling debts that Chico Marx strongly protests are not his.
The inclusion of an aging Al Capone and a youthful Richard Daley in walk-on roles, as well as some other pleasurable surprises, continues to make this series a boisterously welcome romp in nostalgia, but like a good many pulp stories of the same era, the detective story involved relies far too heavily on far too many complications. Not quite hidden is the fact that the plot makes little or no sense at all.
Next, however, an urgent job for Howard Hughes.
Rating: C.
[UPDATE] 09-14-11. This was the third in a series of 24 recorded Toby Peters adventures. There’s no doubting the popularity of the character, and one of the reasons has to be sheer nostalgia. The clients he has and characters he meets while tackling their cases, mostly real-life movie stars but loads of other famous personalities of the 1940s as well, are guaranteed to catch any would-be reader’s eye.
While I no longer recall the details of this one, the weaknesses of the plots in general are what I do remember. I read a lot of the books in the series, though, so I must not have minded too much!
September 14th, 2011 at 9:11 pm
To Catch A Spy is the only one of Stuart Kaminky’s books I’ve read. Not at all impresed with Toby Peters, but Cary Grant is the client and I thought brilliantly realized. You can hear him, and almost see him. The story is pretty good as well.
September 14th, 2011 at 9:37 pm
That’s one I haven’t read. Over the past few months I’ve discovered that I’ve been neglecting the books written at the ends of several authors’ long careers, and Stuart Kaminsky is just one of many in that regard.
And so I haven’t read a Toby Peters book in a long time, but I’m not surprised that he caught Cary Grant’s persona just right. Kaminsky was a long time movie buff, and in fact he received a doctorate in film studies from Northwestern University. He also was the first director of the Graduate Film Conservatory at Florida State University.
(I just checked his obituary in the New York Times to make sure I had my facts straight.)