Wrapping up Toby Peters

Mildred Pierced (2003) was the 23rd of the 24 Toby Peters mysteries written by the late Stuart M. Kaminsky. Like the others, it is Hollywood-based, featuring real movie stars, and outrageously funny, in addition to being a good mystery. This time Joan Crawford witnesses a murder and hires Toby, a private investigator, to keep her name out of the papers.

Toby has another reason for his interest in the case, namely that Sheldon Minck, the hapless dentist he shares an office with, stands accused of murdering his wife, Mildred, while supposedly practicing archery. He doesn't know why Sheldon loved Mildred, but he knows he did. So there must be something else going on. Besides, he knows Sheldon couldn't hit the side of a barn from inside the barn, unless he was aiming at something else.

One can sense during the course of the novel that Kaminsky is wrapping up the Toby Peters series. Not only does Mildred Minck, a continuing character, die, but so does the wife of Toby's brother, a Los Angeles cop and a frequent Toby ally and nemesis. By the end of the novel, the brother has left the police force and joined Toby's detective agency. And then Sheldon comes into a lot of money when one of his outlandish inventions actually works. So either the series must be ending or it must be taking off in a new direction. Unfortunately it was the former.

Before his death in 2009, Kaminsky wrote several more mysteries in his other series, including the Abe Lieberman books and the Inspector Rostnikov books, but just one more Toby Peters mystery. They are all great fun, but Mildred Pierced, along with A Fatal Glass of Beer (featuring W.C. Fields) ranks among the best.