Smart Moves Hardcover – January 1, 1987 by Stuart M. Kaminsky
Book 12 of 24: The Toby Peters Mysteries
 
It doesn’t take a genius to see Albert Einstein’s life is in danger, but it will take a hard-headed Hollywood PI to save him. It’s all relative.
 
It’s April 1942, the world is at war, and LA private detective Toby Peters has been summoned to Princeton, New Jersey, to deal with a situation of the utmost gravity—the world’s greatest physicist is being threatened. Blackmailers claim to have evidence that Albert Einstein has been passing nuclear secrets to Russia, and Nazi assassins want to do away with one of the most famous opponents of Hitler’s rule. Sounds like a formula for disaster.
 
Peters is used to dealing with Hollywood’s elite—not exactly a brain trust—but the East Coast is a new beat for him. Soon he’s swept up in some serious Manhattan mayhem, trying to keep Einstein from harm but also trying to stay alive himself.
 
Incorporating cameos from Paul Robeson and Frank Sinatra, Edgar Award–winning author Stuart M. Kaminsky “has such a good time writing, and he so loves the period, that the reader is swept along willy-nilly” (TheNew York Times Book Review).
 
From Publishers Weekly
In the 11th Toby Peters caper, Kaminsky (The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance relocates his seedy, middle-aged private eye to New York. Away from L.A. and his usual movie star clients, Peters is still working for celebrities. This time (April, 1942) his client is Albert Einstein, worried that Nazi Fifth columnists are besmirching his loyalty to the Allied cause. Almost incidentally, they may also be planning an assassination. Peters flies East, sets up in New York's Taft Hotel and gets on the case. Soon he's involved with a couple of wise-cracking FBI men, the singer Paul Robeson and a production of Othello, a crazed Hungarian killer and an aging female telephone operator at the Taft. Peters's L.A. officemate, dentist Shelly Minck, is also in town. Peters and Minck move around a lot, avoiding the Hungarian and discovering bodies until the climax at the Waldorf-Astoria. Kaminsky's usual 1940s home-front color is rather pale here (despite a nice scene of Sinatra at the Paramount); the plot doesn't need an Einstein to figure it out; and the Peters-and-Minck slapstick wears thin. Quick, Toby: Back to Hollywood.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.