The year is 1940 and Los Angeles-based private eye Toby Peters has been asked to track down a murderer stalking the back lots of one of Hollywood's most powerful movie companies.

A forties Hollywood PI does not forsake Gary Cooper: "Like all of Toby [Peters's] adventures, High Midnight is high entertainment" (The Cincinnati Post).

When laconic leading man Gary Cooper needs a detective, he does the smart thing and hires Toby Peters, sleuth to the stars. But the man he finds in Peters's office isn't the famously discreet private eye—it's the dentist who shares his office, who's always...

"A page-turning romp" from the Edgar Award–winning author featuring a nutty dentist, a killer crossbow, and Joan Crawford in 1940s Hollywood (Booklist, starred review).

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...

In a fun series with “shades of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett,” a 1940s PI must find out who’s gunning for Peter Lorre (TheSan Diego Union-Tribune).
 
Scaly-voiced and bug-eyed actor Peter Lorre has become one of the most recognizable faces in Hollywood, especially after appearing in the Sam Spade crime drama, The Maltese Falcon, last year. Yet Hollywood PI Toby Peters still has...

Accompanied by a scholarly dwarf and a wrestler-turned-poet, 1942 Hollywood investigator Toby Peters investigates the disappearance of three of Salvador Dali's paintings from his Carmel, California, retreat.

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...

A circus stakeout puts Toby Peters at the bottom of the food chain The gorilla doesn't like clowns. Normally that wouldn't bother Toby Peters, since detective work tends to keep him far away from animal cages, but tonight he's dressed as a clown and locked in with the ape. The animal's handler told him not to worry-gorillas don't eat people. They just like to tear their arms and legs off.   What the ape doesn't understand is that Peters is here for...

14th novel in the Toby Peters mystery series.

A hotel murder involves Toby Peters with one of Hollywood's toughest stars 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 heels is the house detective, who's come to check on the commotion in Room 303. Reasoning...