Private eye Toby Peters follows boxing as much as the next guy, but he never expected to encounter heavyweight champion Joe Louis this way: covered with blood and standing on a deserted beach next to the corpse of Peters's ex-wife's husband. The champ is innocent, but he has something to hide, and Toby agrees to protect the Brown Bomber from the police and the press.
Following up on names he gets from the dead man's address book, Peters soon finds himself in Reed's gym, embroiled in a sensational fight scam that may ring the final bell for him. Bruised and battered, Peters meets up with an overzealous Santa Monica cop with a special fondness for the L.A. phone book, a sleazy boxing manager with lousy taste in suits, and a trio of ham-fisted heavies who remind him of the Three Stooges.
Along with his ragtag band of friends and assistants, Peters follows a bloody trail of deception that leads full circle, to the same deserted beach and some startling revelations.
The Toby Peters mysteries by Stuart Kaminsky are period pieces with an enjoyably wry style. Narrator-hero Peters, a luckless, self-deprecating private eye in 1940s Hollywood, helps famous clients and interacts with a colorful cast of supporting characters. In this outing the guest celebrity is heavyweight champ Joe Louis, who proclaims his innocence of murder but who also seems to have something to hide. Tom Parker serves the story well. The bad guys require the "dems" and "doze" of hard- boiled slang while eccentric characters, such as a Norwegian midget and a near-deaf landlady, offer a range of other vocal challenges, all of which he handles well. Most importantly, Parker makes Toby Peters someone you like and root for. G.H. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine
