Stuart M. Kaminsky

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...

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...

Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov is an honest policeman in a very dishonest post-Soviet Union. He and his team are searching for a serial killer who has claimed at least 40 victims. And then there is the problem of protecting a visiting British journalist who is working on a story about a...

This "enjoyable lark" is a road-trip mystery with an old Hollywood backdrop, starring PI Toby Peters and the great comic W. C. Fields (Library Journal). Under names like Otis J. Raisincluster, Quigley E. Sneersight, and Cormorant Beecham III, W. C. Fields squirreled away nearly a million dollars...

"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...

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...

A Moscow cop is left out in the cold in this "impressive" Edgar Award winner for Best Mystery Novel (The Washington Post Book World). When forced to choose between the law and the party line, Police Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov has a disturbing tendency to fight for justice, and that has won him...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

This thrilling crime novel features "the best cop to come out of the Soviet Union since Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko" (San Francisco Examiner). 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...

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...

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...

Mildred Minck is an unremarkable woman - until one tragic night in June 1944 when she becomes the first citizen of Los Angeles to be murdered by crossbow. The prime suspect is her husband, dentist Sheldon Minck, who's found standing over her body with the weapon in hand, raving that only Joan...

A hard-boiled Hollywood PI has to work without a net to save Emmett Kelly from a killer who's not clowning around: "Nostalgic fun" (Publishers Weekly). In February 1942, Californians may be living in fear of a Japanese attack, but the show must go on. The circus is in town - unfortunately so is...

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...

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...

This Chicago cop drama is "jam-packed with the stuff of good crime fiction - character, style, place, recognizable human conflict" (The Washington Post). When the wife of a mob witness is killed and his teenage son is kidnapped, the ransom isn't cash - it's his life. The dead can't testify. If...