Description de l’éditeur
Gen. Douglas MacArthur enlists the help of a discreet private detective in "one of the sprightliest of the [Toby Peters] series" (Time).
It's September 1942, and Gen. Douglas MacArthur believes he's got what it takes to win the war in the Pacific—but he's got a personal problem to take care of first. An aide has run off with his war chest, his donor list, and a handful of embarrassing private letters: a haul that would make the general a perfect target for blackmail and derail the post-war presidential run he's planning. This is one battle he can't afford to lose.
So the general enlists Det. Toby Peters, who has built a reputation for discretion among Hollywood's elite, not to mention the White House. Forming a surprising alliance with former Pinkerton agent and legendary crime novelist, Dashiell Hammett, Peters follows the trail to Angel Springs, California, and a mysterious millionaire who's definitely no angel. In protecting the general from blackmail, Peters hopes to avoid paying the ultimate price himself.
Edgar Award winner Stuart M. Kaminsky "has a delightfully original mind enriching—rather than just borrowing from—an old literary form" (Los Angeles Times).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This 13th entry in Kaminsky's breezy, entertaining series featuring 1940s private eye Toby Peters finds the engaging Southern California sleuth in the company of real-life celebrities and fictional screwballs and lawbreakers. With WWII raging in the South Pacific, Gen. Douglas MacArthur makes a clandestine visit to Southern California and hires Peters to recover stolen documents that could severely derail his planned postwar presidential run. Peters encounters Dashiell Hammett in Hollywood, where the author is avoiding his paramour Lillian Hellman while waiting to join the army, and Hammett lends the detective a helping hand. Voice-over actor Bowlby is a smart choice for these swift-paced tales; he endows Peters with a wry, mildly world-weary voice that comes across as tough without sounding rough. He saves the full hardboiled effect for Peters's eternally angry homicide detective brother, Phil. Peters's office-mate, Sheldon Minck, the world's most unsanitary dentist (he chomps cigars as he works) sounds as slurry, whiny, and needy as he is on the page. As for Bowlby's interpretations of MacArthur and Hammett, their personalities stern and humorless for the general, slightly bemused and relaxed for the writer fit hand in glove with what we know from the history books. An Open Road/MysteriousPress.com e-book.
