Stuart M. Kominsky

The first in a mystery series set in 1940s Hollywood, where a hard-boiled private eye helps a cast of real-life stars: "Nostalgic fun" (Publishers Weekly). Hollywood, 1940: It's been four years since security guard Toby Peters got fired from the Warner Brothers lot for breaking a screen cowboy's...

In this mystery introducing a hard-boiled Soviet police inspector, "Kaminsky gets Russia right" (Ed McBain). Aleksander Granovsky has dedicated his life to exposing the brutality of the Russian penal system. In two days, he will be tried for the crime of smuggling essays to the West. It is a...

Tension runs high as a Moscow cop investigates murder under the big top - from the Edgar Award-winning "Ed McBain of Mother Russia" (Kirkus Reviews). Porfiry Rostnikov was one of the top detectives in Moscow - until he crossed the KGB. On the orders of the secret service, this bulldog cop is...

A Moscow cop juggles cases of kidnapping, murder, and a missing Czarist-era document in a modern-day mystery with "never a dull moment" (Library Journal). In the waning days of the Russian Empire, the Czar inked a secret treaty with Japan that was stolen en route by one of the workmen on the...

On the eve of Pearl Harbor, Howard Hughes hires Hollywood gumshoe Toby Peters to find stolen blueprints in this "marvelously entertaining" series (Newsday). Millionaire Howard Hughes likes his secrets. He likes to keep them - and he definitely doesn't like having them stolen. Hollywood PI Toby...

With his Chicago cops, Edgar Award winner "Kaminsky is hard to beat for a thoughtful, well-plotted, well-written mystery" (The Washington Post Book World). Most days, the counters at Maish's Deli on Chicago's North Side are crowded with elderly Jewish men who trade stories and crack wise. But...

Murder intrudes on a Moscow cop's vacation: "Kaminsky's Rostnikov novels are among the best mysteries being written" (The San Diego Union-Tribune). Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov is finding spring in Yalta to be quite lovely. Accompanying his wife, Sarah, as she gets much needed rest and...

A dentist dangles from the window of a swanky Park Avenue hotel, while Toby Peters, a Los Angeles detective who's very far from home, clutches the man by his jacket, which is tearing slowly, stitch by stitch. Across the room, a dead man lies on the bed, his killer pounding on the hotel room door...

A Soviet cop stars in this novel of "sweaty-palmed suspense.... Equal parts likeable characters and believable dangers" (The Washington Post Book World). The Moscow Film Festival is in town, and the elite artists of the East and West have convened at the legendary Metropole Hotel to drink...

In the darkest hours of communist rule, Father Merhum fought to protect the sanctity of the Orthodox Church. Now the Soviet Union is gone, but the bureaucracy survives, and within it lurk men who would do anything to undermine the fragile new Russian democracy. Father Merhum is on his way to...

A Chicago cop is out to avenge his nephew's murder in this "masterly creation" that puts the Edgar Award-winning author in "the Parker/Paretsky league" (Chicago Tribune). When you're a 62-year-old cop with bad knees, most days feel pretty long. But the longest day of Abe Lieberman's life begins...

Frankly, a killer doesn't give a damn about offing Clark Gable - or Toby Peters - in this "fast-paced and colorful addition to a very successful series" (Publishers Weekly). On December 10, 1938, Atlanta burned again. In the back lot at David O. Selznick's studio, sets from a dozen old pictures...

Lew Fonseca quit his job as a process server with the State's Attorney's office in Cook County, Illinois, and headed for Key West. Sidetracked by fate when his car broke down in Sarasota, Florida, he decided to stick around, making ends meet by doing some investigative work for local attorneys.

Toby Peters wakes up with a headache, a gun in his face, and a body on the hotel-room bed. He is less surprised by the gun than by the man holding it: Marion Morrison, a.k.a John Wayne. Both of them were lured here by the dead man. The next arrival is a prostitute named Olivia, and hot on her...

"Edgar winner Kaminsky offers plenty of nostalgic fun" as Hollywood PI Toby Peters teams up with Cary Grant in this World War II-era spy romp (Publishers Weekly). Since the start of World War II, Cary Grant has been working undercover in Hollywood as a spy for the British crown. When a ring of...

PI Toby Peters comes to the aid of Charlie Chaplin when the Little Tramp becomes a big target in this "ingenious" mystery from the Edgar Award winner (Kirkus Reviews). In 1943, Charlie Chaplin is far from the most popular man in America. His communist sympathies and romantic indiscretions with...

In an era of financial free-for-all in Russia, a Moscow cop deals with rampant crime in a "terrific" and "exceptional" police drama (Detroit Free Press). It's the mid-'90s, and capitalism and privatization have come to Russia. As the trickle of cash turns to a torrent, bureaucrats become...

The Soviet Union is dead, and Russian society has been fractured into a thousand pieces. Through those cracks seeps the first serial killer in the country's history, whose exploits send Moscow into a frenzy. As his colleagues hunt for the pipe-wielding maniac who's killed 40 women so far, Police...

An Edgar Award-winning author steals the show again in "a beautifully calibrated mix of wit, suspense, and quiet honesty" (The Washington Post Book World). It should have been an easy score - a suburban house on a quiet cul-de-sac, with the owners scheduled to be gone all night. But career...

In this "marvelously entertaining" mystery, a hard-boiled Hollywood private eye investigates a murdered Munchkin on the set of The Wizard of Oz (Newsday). A year after The Wizard of Oz's smash success, the yellow brick road is crumbling. The famous sets have been left standing on a soundstage in...