Dancing in the Dark - Hardcover

Kaminsky, Stuart M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0892965282 ISBN 13: 9780892965281

Publisher: Mysterious Pr, 1996

Synopsis

In the nineteenth installment of a 1940s Hollywood detective series, Fred Astaire hires Toby Peters to help him get rid of an incredibly untalented dance student, whose tutelage he has been forced to undertake by her threatening mafioso boyfriend.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Even Fred Astaire can't dance his way out of trouble without help from Toby Peters, detective to the stars in wartime Hollywood. In Toby's 19th entertaining case (after Tomorrow is Another Day), mob moll Luna Martin wants dance lessons. Her boyfriend, nicknamed "Fingers" because he removes those of his enemies, invites the great dancer to instruct Luna?or suffer bodily harm. After Luna bats her eyelashes once too often at the star, however, a nervous Astaire, fearing wrathful Fingers, hires Toby to stand in. But Toby doesn't "know a tango from a funeral march." The disappointed Luna complains, but not for long; someone cuts her throat. As the bodies pile up, Toby also struggles with his ex-wife's decision to marry a B-movie actor and takes poundings from an enigmatic legbreaker named Kudlap Singh, formerly a professional wrestler known as the Beast of Bombay. Clues lead to a star-filled benefit at L.A.'s historic Wiltern Theatre, where danger lurks when Astaire takes the stage. As always in this engaging series, Edgar-winner Kaminsky effortlessly choreographs Hollywood history, colorful cast and dirty doings.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

In 1943, Arthur Forbes is a respected California businessman, but not too many years earlier he lived in Detroit and was known as Fingers Intaglia because he liked to remove the fingers of his victims. Luna, his mistress, wants to learn to dance, and she wants Fred Astaire to teach her. Fred doesn't have time for private lessons, particularly when the client wants to focus on the horizontal mambo. To get Luna and her lover off his back, Astaire hires Toby Peters, private eye to the stars. When Luna drops dead at Toby's feet, Fingers is ready to resume his former profession but doesn't want a scandal. A deal is cut: if Toby can find the killer, he can live. Such a deal. The nineteenth Toby Peters mystery will delight Kaminsky fans. It has all the elements they've come to expect in the series: clients and suspects from Hollywood's Golden Age; carefully researched and faithfully reproduced period atmosphere; and a witty, self-deprecating, first-person narrative from the world-weary and wryly observant Peters. Wes Lukowsky

About this edition

• Publisher: Mysterious Pr
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0892965282
• ISBN 13: 9780892965281
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 228