I generally love the Toby Peters mysteries by the late film historian, Stuart Kaminsky. Peters, as former studio guard and private detective (in the Sam Spade mode), consistently becomes involved in mysteries that involve one or more celebrities as potential victims, suspects, and/or allies. The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance is not exception to the Kaminsky formula. He’s crossed paths with W. C. Fields, Mae West, the Marx Brothers, Judy Garland, Bela Legosi, Gary Cooper, (Ringling Brothers clown) Emmett Kelly, and in this one, John Wayne. In fact, there is even a very sympathetic portrait of Charlie Chaplin as possible extortion victim/socialist sympathizer. If nothing else, one gets Hollywood history in a very pleasant way through these mysteries.Is it a mere coincidence that Toby Peters is moonlighting as hotel security in a run-down Hollywood hotel when a murder and a series of questionable activities are uncovered? It would be no spoiler to suggest that it isn’t. Why is John Wayne mixed up in shady activities at a hotel well off the “A” list? If extortion is a potential motive for the murder(s) [You didn’t think the body count would rest at ONE, did you?], who is really behind it and how are upcoming and high-powered celebrities being drawn into the scheme? At another point (or two), Peters seems to be set up as a potential patsy. And, of course, no matter how innocent Peters is, any friction with the police force means problems with his brother Phil, the cop who always beat him up as a kid.Sometimes, one thinks that Peters spends more time unconscious than conscious in these stories. The only good thing about this tendency is that one always wonders what Max Fleischer cartoon character, Koko the Clown (the character who used to come out of the ink bottle and off the drawing board in those old shorts), will do in Peter’s troubled dreams. That’s part of the comic relief in this series. Another bit of comic relief is the Abbott & Costello style dialogues that Peters has with his old-fashioned Eastern European landlady.I read The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance as a "completist." I’m not a huge John Wayne fan and just read it because it’s one of the few in the series that I’d never read before. Sadly, the bad guys were all too predictable in this one and it seemed reminiscent of too many other mysteries. As good as this series is, I fear The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance isn’t up to its standard. In fact, I don’t remember a lot of sex scenes in the Peters canon, but there’s a scene in this one that makes up for the lack in others. It isn’t overt, just unexpected in terms of the character. I only mention this for those who don’t like such scenes. I wasn’t offended; it just seemed out of place—like a lot of this novel.
Do You like book The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance (1986)?
