Behind the Mystery

Nominated for 2006 Edgar Award and Agatha Christie Award by Mystery Writers of America
 
 
 

	In August 2005,  TERROR TOWN (Tor Books), an Abe Lieberman novel
	In August, CSI:NEW YORK: DEAD OF WINTER, a CSI: NEW YORK novel (Pocket Books).
	In October, BEHIND THE MYSTERY (Hothouse Press), a book of interviews with best-selling mystery novelists by me.

   June 2005
 

Lew Fonesca is a man who does things for people. He makes small problems go away and tries to keep the larger ones from landing his clients in jail. He finds deadbeats, errant spouses, and generally keeps the populace of Sarasota on the up and up.  Now Lew is faced with one case that will try his patience...and another that may break his heart.  The first involves an elderly woman who swears she's witnessed a murder in her old age home despite the fact that everyone she tells her story to: her family, the hospital staff, and finally the cops all tell her that it just couldn't have happened. The other has Lew trying to find out the identity of a hit and run driver who killed a 14 year old boy. This task dredges up old memories and a lot of pain, for Lew fled Chicago years ago, after a drunk driver killed his beloved wife.  As Lew begins to dig deeper into both cases he finds that they are tied together in ways he can't hope to untangle.  And when someone tries to run him down, Lew knows that he's getting close to some nasty home truths and he is going to have get the answers if he is to survive.

August 2004
 
 

THE LAST DARK PLACE a new Lieberman due out in November,2004

One of Stuart M. Kaminsky’s most memorable characters, Abe Lieberman is a veteran detective who uses his head and heart more than his gun. Lieberman loves what he does, and this takes a toll as his commitment to what is right is sorely tested every day on the mean streets of Chicago. As a moral man, he is sometimes faced with uncomfortable ethical choices in order to see that justice—rather than the letter of the law— is meted out.
With The Last DarkPlace, Lieberman and his Irish partner, Bill Hanrahan, known on the streets as the Rabbi and the Priest, have their hands full with dark matters both profes¬sional and personal.
Lieberman goes to Arizona to pick up a mob enforcer in an extradition case that goes horribly awry when the man he is slated to bring back is gunned down at the airport. He comes back from this disaster determined to find out who arranged the hit and to explain to his superiors just how he could have let this happen on his watch.
And there’s the little matter of pulling off Lieberman’s grandson’s bar mitzvah, which threatens to bankrupt him.
While Lieberman is away, Hanrahan has his hands full. Coupled with a temporary partner who is racist, sexist, and a general bane of human existence, Hanrahan has to deal with a rape case involving the young wife of a fellow police officer. Hanrahan must race to find the culprits because he knows homicidal rage when he sees it and knows that it is only a matter of time before the officer takes the law into his own hands.
And then there’s a young man who dreams of being a star...or killing one to get the notoriety

NOW YOU SEE IT, the new Toby Peters novel which will be out in November

Illusion gets more deadly than reality on Toby Peters’s twenty-fourth outing from Edgar-winning author Stuart M. Kaminsky. A string of star-studded successes—most recently with Cary Grant in To Catch a Spy and an edgy Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierced—has won Tinseltown detective Toby Peters a bit of local celebrity, and that’s something his new client, Harry Blackstone, understands. At the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles, Blackstone is billed as the World’s Greatest Living Magician. Of course, should the giant buzz saw in the climax to Blackstone’s act cut the beautiful young woman in fact in half, his sterling reputation would be ruined. And someone among the Los Angeles Friends of Magic is decidedly intent upon ruining it—whatever the price, including the life of Toby’s prime suspect. Unfortunately, with the corpse count mounting, the evidence is pointing increasingly to Toby’s client as the man behind the murders. As always, adding to the wackiness of Toby’s investigation are the ungentle dentist Sheldon Minck, wrestler-poet Jeremy Butler, the suave, small-statured Swiss multilingualist Gunter Wherthman, and daffy Mrs. Plaut. But to solve the case, Toby finds he needs someone else—the dashing star of the movie A Thousand and One Nights, Cornel Wilde.

Mystery Writers of America Presents Show Business is Murder  by Stuart M. Kaminsky

These all-new short stories of movies, music, murder, and mayhem by today's brightest talents will take you from vaudeville to Vegas, and make it chillingly clear that in the world of entertainment, if you want to make it, you may have to step on some people-or over their dead bodies... 

Includes first-run stories from 
 

Carolyn Wheat John Lutz Elaine Viets Parnell Hall Stuart M. Kaminsky Edward D. Hoch Annette Meyers Angela Zeman David Bart Bob Shayne

Mark Terry Gary Phillips Suzanne Shaphren Libby Fischer Hellman Charles Ardai Gregg Andrew Hurwitz Steve Hockensmith Shelley Freydont Robert Lopresti Mat Coward

April 2004

Delightful Article in Scene Magazine

November 2003

For immediate release November 13, 2003 Controversy Over  MIDNIGHT PASS   Stuart Kaminsky Deepens SARASOTA-BASED MYSTERY

Sarasota's Edgar award-winning Stuart Kaminsky jumps into the controversy over Midnight Pass with the release of his much-anticipated mystery aptly titled MIDNIGHT PASS, published by Tor Books.  Sarasota News & Books will host the national book launch of Kaminsky’s third Sarasota-based mystery, 7:00 PM, Wednesday, December 3, at SN&B, 1341 Main Street, downtown Sarasota. 

Lew Fonesca is a guy just trying to get along. When his wife died in a senseless auto wreck, he got up and left his old life--and when his car gave out in sunny Sarasota, Florida, he stayed. He takes small process-serving gigs and various odd jobs helping people out, and he tries, although maybe not as hard as he should, to fix the gaping hole in his heart. 

But for a man who just wants to ease through life without any complications, Lew has a pretty full plate. The shrink that Lew's been seeing for more than a year wants him to finally dump all the grief that he's carrying around so he can have more than a half-life. And Sally, the pretty single mom and social worker who has helped Lew in the past, wants to deepen their friendship. On top of that, a local minister asks him to find a town council member who has gone missing just before a crucial vote that could ruin a struggling community, and a distraught father comes to Lew to track down his wife and two kids, who Lew suspects ran off with the man's best friend. When people start showing up dead, Lew knows he's in way over his head--and this time he may not be able make it all come out okay.

MILDRED PIERCED, the 23rd novel in the Toby Peters series, is now available.   Featuring Joan Crawford as Toby's client, the down-and-out, but never defeated private eye tries to save hapless dentist Sheldon Minck from what looks like a certain fall for killing his wife Mildred with a crossbow.  Crawford, on the verge of getting the role of Mildred Pierce, wants her name kept out of the papers.  Before the tale is over, Toby is in a race to save Crawford's life and a group of demented survivalists are determined to get Toby out of the way.

MIDNIGHT PASS, the third Lew Fonesca novel, will be available in December 2003.  Lew finds himself looking for a kidnapped politician who is the key vote in a legal battle over valuable property in Sarasota, a property so valuable that people are beginning to die and Lew is the one finding the bodies.  At the same time, Lew goes in search of a missing woman who has run away from her husband with her children and may be with a man who is more than a little dangerous.

DEATH OF A CUBAN CHEF is for those who read German.  The short novel was just published by Verlag.  There is no date set for English language publication.

A short story, THE SHOOTING OF JOHN ROY WORTH,  is scheduled for publication shortly in ELLERY QUEEN MYSTERY MAGAZINE.

IN A DARK PLACE, the next Abe Lieberman/Bill Hanrahan mystery is finished but is not scheduled for publication till the Fall of 2004.

NOW YOU SEE IT, the next Toby Peters mystery, featuring Blackstone the Magician, is in the works for 2004.