The Howard Hughes Affair

On the eve of Pearl Harbor, Howard Hughes hires Hollywood gumshoe Toby Peters to find stolen blueprints in the "marvelously entertaining" series ( Newsday).   Millionaire Howard Hughes likes his secrets. He likes to keep them—and he definitely doesn't like having them stolen. Hollywood PI Toby Peters has a rep for being discreet. So when the film tycoon and aviation magnate needs a detective to very privately investigate the theft of top-secret blueprints taken from his home during one of his fabulous parties, he summons Peters. But what starts as counter-espionage intrigue turns into a triple murder, and Peters soon finds himself bait for a killer.   As America is pulled into World War II, Peters is just trying to stay alive as a gunman chases him through a deserted television soundstage. With help from some unlikely allies—including Basil Rathbone, the silver screen's Sherlock Holmes, and gangster/patriot Bugsy Siegel—Peters is determined to dodge the bullets long enough to recover the blueprints before they fall into the wrong hands.   The Chicago Sun-Times calls the Toby Peters mysteries "entertainment at its best" as Edgar Award–winning author Stuart Kaminsky takes readers on a rollicking tour of Hollywood in the forties.