Slice of P.I.: “Murder on the Yellow Brick Road”

(Part of a series celebrating fictional private eyes.)



Murder on the Yellow Brick Road, by Stuart M. Kaminsky (Penguin, 1979), with cover artwork by Joel Iskowitz.

Stuart Kaminsky (1934-2009) taught film studies at the college level and authored a variety of non-fiction works about movies and movie makers, so it was no surprise that when he turned to penning mystery novels, they should feature personalities from Tinseltown. Not just any personalities, but classic stars of the silver screen. His protagonist was Toby Peters, who I once described in an interview with the author as “a disheveled, divorced and taco-loving former security officer with Warner Brothers Studio, who’d been fired in 1936 (after ‘breaking the arm of a Western star who had made the mistake of thinking he was as tough in person as he was on the screen’), and subsequently hung out his shingle as the most low-rent of private eyes. This job change, however, didn’t greatly alter his clientele. He’s continued to work for early 1940s celebrities, both Hollywood habitués and others.”

For instance, in Toby’s first adventure, Bullet for a Star (1977), he’s hired by swashbuckler Errol Flynn to retrieve a compromising photograph of him with a very naked young beauty. But when Toby goes to swap $5,000 for the incriminating image, he is knocked out … only to wake up later beside the now deceased extortionist, who has been slain by the gumshoe’s own gun. The second series entry, Murder on the Yellow Brick Road, imagines our unintimidating hero trying to solve the murder of a Munckin on the Wizard of Oz sound stage, while also protecting the life of headliner Judy Garland. Subsequent entries in the series had him working for such famous historical figures as the Marx Brothers, billionaire Howard Hughes, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, General Douglas MacArthur, comedian W.C. Fields, suave leading man Cary Grant, and magician Harry Blackstone.

Private-eye fiction authority Kevin Burton Smith calls the two-dozen Toby Peters tales “good old-fashioned, B-movie entertainment. Not too heavy, with straightforward plots and full of wonderfully colorful characters who pop in and out of the series with wild abandon. You can just picture character actors playing these roles.”

He’s not wrong about that.