Stuart M. Kaminsky
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Lovable everyman Lew Fonesca, the Man Who Makes Things Work in Sarasota, is once again faced with cases that try his patience and test his sanity.
A local curmudgeon who has been campaigning to end state-sponsored school funding is brutally killed. A recent graduate of a public high school for the gifted is arrested for the crime and turns to Lew for help.
A semi-retired and much beloved singer of children's songs is being anonymously pushed to...
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Four years ago Lew Fonesca's wife was struck and killed in a hit-and-run within sight of their apartment. He fled Chicago, driving mindlessly until his car gave up the ghost in Sarasota, FL. Working from a cheap office behind the Dairy Queen on Highway 301, he makes a threadbare living as a process server and savors his clinical depression like a fine wine.
Life's a sneaky mistress, though, and has a way of suckering you into caring. Lew's found...
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Toby Peters mysteries volume 1
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English
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Hollywood detective Toby Peters does a job for one of Tinseltown's finest It's been four years since security guard Toby Peters got fired from the Warner Brothers lot for breaking a screen cowboy's arm. Since then he's scratched out a living as a private detective-missing persons and bodyguard work, mostly-but now his old friends, the Warners, have a job for him. Someone has mailed the studio a picture of Errol Flynn caught in a compromising position...
5) Vengeance
Author
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Lew Fonesca mysteries volume 1
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English
Description
Three years ago Lew Fonseca quit his job as a process server with the State Attourney's Office in Cook County, Illinois, and drove his rattling Toyota south to escape the memories of his beloved late wife. Headed for Key West, the Toyota broke down in a Dairy Queen parking lot in Sarasota, Florida. Buoyed by the friendship of a few trustworthy souls, Lew settled there, making ends meet by doing some investigative work for local attourneys.
Now, Lew...
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As a serial killer terrorizes Moscow, Rostnikov gets an assignment in Havana The young girl leads her target into a park, planning on robbing him at knifepoint as soon as they are out of sight. But before she can strike, her quarry changes from a stooped middle-aged man to a feral beast, swinging a lead pipe with sadistic glee. By the time the police find the thief, her murderer is long gone. He is the first serial killer in Russian history, responsible...
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Toby Peters mysteries volume 24
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English
Description
Toby and his brother team up to protect a magician from disappearing for good In the six years since he lost his job working security at the Warner Brothers' lot, private investigator Toby Peters has taken cases from oddballs ranging from Peter Lorre to W. C. Fields. But none of them had the stage presence of Harry Blackstone, the greatest magician in the world. When an anonymous rival demands the illusionist reveal his secrets on stage or suffer...
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Toby Peters mysteries volume 20
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English
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A huckster repeatedly robs a comedian, leading Toby on a cross-country chase The bank accounts are in the names of men like Otis J. Raisincluster, Quigley E. Sneersight, and Cormorant Beecham, but any comedy connoisseur knows that names that nonsensical could come only from the twisted brain of W. C. Fields. When toiling on the vaudeville circuit, the acid-tongued comic actor opened a new account in every town he played, adding up to a mountain of...
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Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov mysteries volume 10
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English
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In post–Cold War Moscow, business is booming and crime pays Capitalism has come to Russia, and money is raining from the sky. As the trickle of cash turns to a torrent, bureaucrats become oligarchs, and the brutal Russian mafia consolidates its power. In the center of this madness is police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov, a thoughtful detective who is struggling to adjust to life in these turbulent times. A prominent businessman is kidnapped in...
10) A fine red rain
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Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov fights to stop a vendetta against the acrobats of the Moscow circus A drunk perches atop the statue of Nikolai Gogol in Arbat Square, and police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov sighs. After years fighting to become a top detective, he has suffered a demotion to the minor crimes unit, which means the lunatic on the statue is his responsibility. But the limping policeman fails to talk the distraught man down, and with a perfect...
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Toby Peters mysteries volume 21
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English
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Toby hunts for the man who wants to kill a fallen star of silent film As Toby Peters crouches behind a tombstone, hiding from a crazed gunman, the private eye thinks of Charlie Chaplin. A few days earlier, the pioneer of film comedy sat in Toby's office, and told him of the hundreds of people who want him dead. Beloved when his public could not hear him speak, his political leanings have made him a pariah. Right-wing radicals, the Ku Klux Klan, and...
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Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov mysteries volume 12
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English
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An international gang war chooses Moscow as its battlefield Moscow police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov has adapted well to life without Communism. But under the Soviets, blood feuds were pursued in the dark halls of bureaucracy, and now they take place in the streets. An international drug ring has chosen Moscow as its next port of call, and the only thing standing in its way is the budding Russian mob, headed by a young man whose brutality is matched...
13) The big silence
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Abe Lieberman mysteries volume 6
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English
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When a witness's son is kidnapped, Chicago's gangland erupts into chaos Once a college football star, Bill Hanrahan has had a hard time of it ever since his bad knees kept him out of the pros. He became a homicide detective with the unfortunate reputation of losing witnesses and loving the bottle. Now Hanrahan is off the sauce, and working a job that should be straightforward: He's guarding a mob informant's ex-wife and teenage son while they tour...
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Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov mysteries volume 14
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English
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A century-old mystery takes Rostnikov halfway around the world 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 Trans-Siberian Railway. More than a one hundred years later, the Soviet Union has gone the way of the Czardom, and police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov is trying to find his way in the Russia of Vladimir Putin. A large amount of money is being sent from...
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Just days after the end of the USSR, a mysterious priest becomes a martyr In service of his beloved Orthodox Church, Father Merhum has spent decades battling Soviet apparatchiks and the KGB. Now the Soviet Union is gone, but the bureaucracy survives, and the aged priest makes plans to denounce Communist supporters, including some within the Church. He is on his way to Moscow when an assassin stops him with an ax. And as he dies, Merhum begs for forgivenessa...
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Toby Peters mysteries volume 19
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English
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To save a film star's fingers, Toby Peters gives dance lessons Fred Astaire has a headache named Luna. The moll of a well-known Los Angeles gangster, Luna has demanded dance lessons from Hollywood's finest hoofer, and whatever Luna wants, Luna gets. But after two lessons with the lead-footed lady, Astaire tires of her making passes at him, and hires famously discreet private investigator Toby Peters to break the news gently. Trouble is, Luna and her...
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Toby Peters mysteries volume 22
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A simple job turns treacherous when Toby Peters stumbles upon a corpse It's a lucky thing that Cary Grant once trained as an acrobat, because Toby Peters's life is in the actor's hands. As the two men sprint through the pitch-dark woods, trying to elude the man with the gun, they come to a canyon ledge. With nowhere to go but down, they scramble over the side. Peters slips, and Grant grabs hold of his wrist. As the killer closes in, Cary's grip begins...
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With his wife in the hospital, Porfiry Rostnikov tries to protect Moscow from chaos Porfiry and Sarah Rostnikov have been in love since the end of World War II, growing old together as the Soviet Union lurches towards modernity. Sarah is recovering from a brain operation, her police inspector husband at her side, when a bearlike man staggers into her hospital room. Hulking, naked, and insensible, he is about to leap out the window when Rostnikov talks...
19) Red chameleon
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To salvage his career, Rostnikov takes on a baffling bathroom murder After a lifetime in service to the Soviet Union, police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov may have found a way out. A high-profile homicide leads him to a cache of documents packed full of incriminating Kremlin gossip, which he uses as a bargaining chip to secure exit visas for himself and his wife. But just before the deal closes, Brezhnev's death sends the nation into turmoil, and dooms...
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Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov mysteries volume 13
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English
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Rostnikov confronts a mystery that stretches from Moscow to the stars Once, Russian children wanted to be cosmonauts like Yuri Gagarin. But the Soviet Union is dead, and the days of Gagarin's glory are long passed. For the men and women aboard the decaying Mir space station, life is an unending series of near-disasters. During one such breakdown, cosmonaut Tsimion Vladovka asks ground control to contact Moscow police inspector Porfiry Rostnikov if...