Now You See It: A Toby Peters Mystery
Read Now You See It: A Toby Peters Mystery Online
Authors: Stuart M. Kaminsky
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General
| Now You See It: A Toby Peters Mystery | |
| Stuart M. Kaminsky | |
| Open Road Media (2004) | |
| Rating: | **** |
| Tags: | Mystery & Detective, General, Fiction |
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.
The storytelling formula Stuart M. Kaminsky employs in his madcap mysteries featuring low-rent, World War II-era Los Angeles private eye Toby Peters has proved remarkably successful over more than a quarter century. Each entry in this series (beginning with 1977's
Bullet for a Star
) finds Toby taking on a celebrity client; being beaten silly at least once during the ensuing investigation; contending with a supporting cast of misfits ever eager to supply ludicrous asides; and eventually, despite meager expectations of his genius, unearthing clues enough to expose a murderer. Yet even with all those familiar ingredients in place,
Now You See It
, the 24th Peters tale, doesn't capture the magic of its recent predecessors.
Which is ironic, since this yarn is all about magic. Toby, now pushing 50 and freshly partnered with his brother, choleric ex-homicide cop Phil Pevsner, is hired in June 1944 to protect "the world’s greatest living magician," Harry Blackstone. It appears that a wealthy but demented rival, "third-rate parlor magician" Calvin Ott, intends to ruin Blackstone's reputation while simultaneously enhancing his own. However, his process of humiliation seems more than a tad extreme, involving not only slaying a seedy PI during Blackstone's buzz-sawing-the-girl-in-half illusion, but also shooting the deceased's "tiger lady" girlfriend. Prepared to curb Ott's scheme, Toby is surprised when Ott himself is done in--knifed in the back of the neck during a formal reception in Blackstone's honor, with more than five dozen witnesses unable to identify the perpetrator. Quite a trick, especially as it leaves Blackstone with means and motive for committing the crime. In order to save the white-maned prestidigitator, Toby must find a phony waiter and a phonier turbaned gunman, stomach punchlines from comic Phil Silvers, enlist the swashbuckling talents of leading man Cornel Wilde, and--riskiest of all--submit to the oral ministrations of his pal Shelly Minck, "the devil’s dentist."
There's a swell twist closing out this book, which proves once again the devious desirability of misdirection. And Kaminsky's decision to begin his chapters with excerpts from the old
Blackstone, The Magic Detective
radio show enhances both his tale's theme and its period flavor. At the same time, though, the formula of this series is strangely underaffected by Toby and Phil's new business relationship, and a swordplay scene, while entertaining, is gratuitous and unbelievable. Following two celebrated Peters outings,
To Catch a Spy
and
Mildred Pierced
,
Now You See It
conjures up comparatively little novelty. Kaminsky may have to pull a rabbit out of his hat next time to stay on top.
--J. Kingston Pierce
When PI Toby Peters answers the bell for the 24th time, his footwork is as nimble as ever, even if the dance will be familiar to fans of Kaminsky's Hollywood historical series. The celebrity-friendly detective has aided every kind of star from Errol Flynn in the first book (
Bullet for a Star
) to Joan Crawford in the most recent (
Mildred Pierced
). Toby often earns gratitude, frequently reaps scars and bruises, but never garners the kind of riches likely to change his boarding-house lifestyle. As WWII appears headed for a close, the great magician Harry Blackstone, who's been challenged and (apparently) threatened by a third-rate competitor, approaches Toby. Now teamed up with his brother, Phil, Toby undertakes to protect and unmask Blackstone's nemesis. Kaminsky makes an art of interjecting bits and pieces of period color, from Toby's dilapidated Crosley auto to 1940s songs or jingles. The running madcap humor includes landlady Irene Plaut's endless memoirs and dentist Shelly Minck's wacky inventions. Murder transforms Blackstone from magician to suspect and leaves him holding the bag, with predictably enjoyable results. Intriguing but simple magic tricks borrowed from
Blackstone: The Magic Detective
radio show serve as clever chapter lead-ins.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Now You See It
Stuart M. Kaminsky
Open Road Integrated Media Ebook
To Sheila and Richard Olin for past birthdays and many more birthdays to come
L
INCOLN
T
HEATRE
D
ECATUR
, I
LLINOIS
W
EDNESDAY
2:16
P.M
.
N
OVEMBER
17, 1942
A
PRETTY YOUNG WOMAN IN
sequined tights and a glittering tiara moved onstage and whispered something to Harry Blackstone who nodded and turned to the audience.
“And now,” he announced, “I will perform an act of magic so big that this theater will not hold all of its wonders.”
Wearing white tie and tails, with a white handkerchief showing out of his left breast pocket, Harry Blackstone looked out at his audience of four hundred people and smiled. Then he winked at a little girl in a seat in the first row on the center aisle. The girl grinned and turned her head toward her mother in embarrassment.
Blackstone was tall and lean; a thin dark mustache and a thick hair of billowing silver hair helped create the illusion that his large ears were not quite so large.
“If you will just follow me into the street in front of the theatre,” he said, moving to the steps to his right and down into the audience. “I will reveal to you a secret that, in my many years as a magician, has never before been revealed to an audience.”
Blackstone stood now in the center aisle and raised his hands to indicate that the audience should rise.
He reached over to the child he had winked at on the aisle row, took her hand and led her toward the rear of the auditorium where the doors were being opened. He looked over his shoulder, saw that people were standing up, and made another gesture.
“The secret,” he said, in a strong tenor voice that everyone could hear, “will be yours as soon as we are all outside.”
“Rabbits?” asked the little girl.
Blackstone reached down to the girl with his free hand, touched her blue coat with its large gold buttons and produced a white rabbit, which he handed to the child.
“Much bigger than rabbits,” he told her in a confidential whisper moving forward again. “How old are you?”
“Six,” she said. “Can I keep him?”
Blackstone looked back at the girl’s mother who was a step behind. The woman smiled and nodded.
“You may keep him,” said Blackstone. “His name is Dunninger. Can you say that?”
“Dunninger,” the girl repeated.
“Carry him gently but firmly,” said Blackstone, moving now to use the hand that wasn’t holding hers to urge the audience into the chilly Illinois afternoon outside.
Still in costume, people from the show were also exiting the building into the street, stopping traffic in both directions to make room for the people slowly flowing out.
“Can you do that?” the girl asked.
“Stop traffic? I’ve done it before,” he said, moving with the girl and her mother.
“Across the street!” he called out. The audience followed his directions. “On the sidewalk.” They began to congregate on the opposite pavement.
There, a woman in tights and a man who looked very much like Blackstone—down to the mustache, silver hair, and large ears, but in a rumpled business suit instead of tie and tails—gently urged people into a semicircle facing the theatre. Blackstone motioned to the woman behind the ticket booth. She pointed at herself, and he nodded that he, indeed, wanted her to join the audience on the street. The woman came out of the booth and crossed the street, where she stood next to a teenage boy.
“There are two of you,” the little girl at Blackstone’s side said, pointing to the man who looked like her companion.
“There is only one Harry Blackstone,” the magician said. “That’s my brother Peter.”
“Is he magic, too?”
“He has been known to do magic,” Blackstone said. “Excuse me.”
He took the girl’s hand from his and patted it gently. The girl wrapped both hands around the nose-twitching rabbit, and Blackstone said above the afternoon traffic.
“Are you ready?” he said.
“So what’s the trick?” called a man from the sidewalk.
“And what’s the secret?” came the shrill voice of a woman.
“Behold!” said Blackstone with a sweep of his hand back toward the theater.
Smoke was now coming out of the open door. A shock of red flame could be seen inside the theater beyond the doors. The people on the street began to applaud wildly.
“Hell of a trick,” came the voice of the man who had asked the question.
“You said you’d tell us the secret,” shouted another man. “How’d you do it?”
“The secret which I could not tell you from the stage, but which I can now reveal,” said Harry Blackstone, “is that the theater really is on fire.”
Place a drinking glass and a nickel on a table. Light a match. Have someone balance the nickel on the table. Blow out the match. Bend the match and balance it on the nickel. Cover the nickel and balanced match with the glass. Challenge those present to remove the match from the nickel without touching the glass or the table and without the nickel moving. If you wish, you can give the following hint: “You can do it with the help of something you might have in your pocket or purse.” The trick: Take a comb. Run it through your hair to create static electricity. Move the comb in a circle around the glass. The match will fall and the nickel will not move
.
—
From the
Blackstone, The Magic Detective
radio show
,
which aired from 1948 to 1950 with
Ed Jerome as Blackstone
J
UNE
25, 1944
T
HE
P
ANTAGES
T
HEATER WASN
’
T ON
fire, but Blackstone definitely had a problem. My brother Phil and I had been hired to take care of the problem before it killed the World’s Greatest Living Magician.
Inside the Pantages, Phil was sitting in the front row with his sons Dave and Nate. Dave, at fourteen, was two years older than his brother and trying his best to hide his awe. It was what fourteen-year-olds did.
Blackstone had opened the show holding a thin yellow hoop, its center covered by white paper. He turned the hoop to show there was nothing on either side. He then turned its face toward the audience, plunged his hand through the paper with a pop of ripping paper and began to pull objects seemingly from another dimension. He pulled out different color silk scarves and let them drift to the stage floor. Dozens of scarves. The audience applauded. Then he reached through the hole in the paper and began to pull out and deposit onstage a collection of rabbits, ducks, and even a pig. The crowd loved it.
Finally, he reached through the paper and took the hand of a smiling dark-eyed woman in a black dress who stepped through the hoop and stood next to him.
From the slit in the rear curtain where I was standing, I could see the boys and my brother Phil. Phil was applauding, but there was no sign of awe on his broad face.