The Toby Peters Mysteries

Coffins fill the basement of a crumbling Los Angeles movie theater. Five vampires crowd around fading horror idol Bela Lugosi, peppering him with questions. A malfunctioning plastic fang causes one of the undead-wannabes to lisp. The effect is less than fearsome, but Lugosi is terrified, for one of these oddballs has been making threats on his life. He hires Toby Peters to provide security against his unbalanced fans. The detective is not concerned, but he should be.

You can't trust a man who's dressed as Mae West, especially not in Mae West's house. One of Hollywood's earliest sex symbols, the whip-smart blonde's star has fallen since the Hays Code cracked down on the racy repartee that made her famous. Her latest project is a thinly veiled autobiographical novel, whose only copy is stolen just after she finishes her first draft. Tonight she's having a Mae West party, with every guest a man dressed as her. The thief is among those in drag, and P.I. Toby Peters has come to tear off his wig. He's there as a favor to his brother, a brutal cop who had a fling with West when she first moved to Hollywood.

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.

A dentist dangles from the window of a swanky Park Avenue hotel, while Toby Peters, a Los Angeles detective who's very far from home, clutches the man by his jacket, which is tearing slowly, stitch by stitch. Across the room, a dead man lies on the bed, his killer pounding on the hotel room door, which sounds like it's going to give way as quickly as the dentist's jacket. Somehow, this entire mess is Albert Einstein's fault. Two groups have been threatening the great physicist. One is a ring of blackmailers who claim to have evidence that he has been passing nuclear secrets to Russia.

Hollywood detective Toby Peters is asleep on his floor when the dentist who shares his office calls, wailing that his wife has left him. While on the one hand, Toby is shocked that a woman as unpleasant as Mildred could ever attract a suitor, he's even more surprised by the name of the alleged Lothario: Peter Lorre, the scaly-voiced, bug-eyed Hollywood character actor. Though he can't imagine why the dentist would want her back, Toby agrees to track down his missing wife. He finds Lorre in a greasy spoon near the Warner Brothers' lot, but the actor doesn't know a thing about the missing Mildred....

The uniformed man standing before Toby Peters is General Douglas MacArthur, a soldier who considers himself the only man who can defeat the Japanese. But though he may be all-powerful in the South Pacific, today he is in Los Angeles with a problem only a detective can solve. The general has an eye on a postwar promotion to the White House, and an aide has stolen his war chest, his donor list, and a handful of embarrassing private letters. To get them back, Toby may need some help.

The year 1942 is a bad time to stage Madame Butterfly. Although Puccini's masterpiece is a perennial favorite of the San Francisco opera crowd, its sympathetic depiction of a Japanese girl causes tension in the dark months following Pearl Harbor. Newspaper editorialists rage against the production, opera buffs picket the theater, and a note appears nailed to the house door, threatening violence against the cast and crew. When the first workman dies, the maestro calls Toby Peters, a Los Angeles detective who works discreetly for Hollywood's rich and famous.

An ax-wielding monk hacks at the door. Toby Peters is on the other side, running as fast as his recently broken leg will allow. Alongside him is Salvador Dalí, dressed in a rabbit suit, insistently muttering "grasshoppers" as they try to make their escape. Dalí insists on being carried across the lawn, so Peters hobbles along with the surrealist in his arms. They get in the car just as the monk chops down the front door. The car doesn't start, and the monk charges silently, the ax in the air.