You Bet Your Life

Author Bio: Stuart M. Kaminsky

Stuart Kaminsky (1934–2009) was one of the most prolific crime fiction authors of the last four decades. He wrote sixty books in all and penned twenty-four novels starring the detective Toby Peters, whom he described as “the anti–Philip Marlowe.” In 1981’s Death of a Dissident, he debuted Moscow police detective Porfiry Rostnikov, whose stories were praised for their accurate depiction of Soviet life. His other two series starred Abe Lieberman, a hardened Chicago cop, and Lew Fonseca, a process server. Born in Chicago, he spent his youth immersed in pulp fiction and classic cinema—two forms of popular entertainment which he would make his life’s work. After college and a stint in the army, he wrote film criticism and biographies of the great actors and directors of Hollywood’s Golden Age. In 1977, when a planned biography of Charlton Heston fell through, he wrote Bullet for a Star, his first Toby Peters novel, beginning a fiction career that would last the rest of his life.