Catch a Falling Clown

Book excerpt: A hard-boiled Hollywood PI has to work without a net to save Emmett Kelly from a killer who’s not clowning around: “Nostalgic fun” (Publishers Weekly). In February 1942, Californians may be living in fear of a Japanese attack, but the show must go on. The circus is in town—unfortunately so is a killer saboteur who’s targeting the star attractions. Private detective Toby Peters is no stranger to going undercover, but this is the first time his disguise will include a red nose. The killer has already electrocuted an elephant, and hobo clown Emmett Kelly has had a close brush with death. The second-rate circus in this sleepy coastal town seems like another world from Peters’s usual Hollywood beat, but of all people, Alfred Hitchcock, the director of Suspicion, is under suspicion. With the investigation on the verge of becoming a three-ring circus, it’s up to Toby Peters to cage the killer before anyone else meets a bad end under the big top. Edgar Award winner Stuart M. Kaminsky’s “Toby Peters series [is] a delight . . . Written with more than a dash of humor” and this big-top murder mystery is a “fun, lightweight book for all mystery fans” (Library Journal).