To Catch a Spy: A Toby Peters Mystery
Toby Peters has rubbed elbows with, and taken a beating for, most of the  brightest stars from Hollywood's 1940s heyday. Judy Garland, Errol Flynn, Bette  Davis, Charlie Chaplin--this disheveled, taco-gulping L.A. private eye has  worked for them all. Usually to his regret. In Stuart M. Kaminsky's wacky but  charmingTo Catch a Spy, he adds the terminally suave Cary Grant to his  client list.As 1943 comes to an end, with Allied bombs battering Berlin and Americans  celebrating a new pork bonus among their wartime food stamps, Grant hires Peters  to make a late-night swap of money for "compromising documents." ("I'm not being  blackmailed over some crime or sexual indiscretion," Grant insists. "It's more  important than that.") However, the mysterious messenger is shot before he can  hand Peters the papers. His dying words: "George Hall." It's only the vaguest of  clues, but enough to send Toby and Grant--who's working for British Intelligence  Services--on a bungling chase that leads to a second corpse, a cabal of Nazi  sympathizers, and a perilous confrontation on a moonlit precipice.What's most remarkable about this 22nd Peters outing is that it's just as  welcome as the first, 1977'sBullet for a Star. Kaminsky, a  film historian, employs his knowledge of Tinsel Town's "golden age" to both  nostalgic and comic effect. More lighthearted than 2001'sA Few Minutes Past Midnight,  but still featuring Kaminsky's usually suspect cast of supporting  eccentrics--including Irene Plaut, Toby's addled landlady, and dentist-from-hell  Shelly Minck--To Catch a Spyis Raymond Chandler by way of the Marx  Brothers.--J. Kingston Pierce