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Booked and Printed
By
Robert C. Hahn
Stuart M. Kaminsky and William G. Tapply (1940-2009):
An Appreciation
The deaths of William G. Tapply on July 28, 2009 and of Stuart M. Kaminsky on Oct. 9, 2009 lend added poignancy to reading what may be their last published books. Both authors had long, distinguished writing careers that garnered fans and accolades from their earliest efforts onward.
Over the course of my reviewing career since 1986, I've been fortunate to cover more than twenty books by the two authors, and I've read considerably more by them. And still, my reading barely scratches the surface.
Stuart M. Kaminsky, who earned lifetime achievement awards from both the Mystery Writers of America (2006) and the Private Eye Writers of America (2007), was not just a prolific mystery novelist. He was also an astute editor, biographer, television writer, interviewer, and graphic novelist. In a writing career that spanned almost four decades, Kaminsky wrote or edited close to ninety volumes.
Kaminsky had a rich academic history: a BA in Journalism and MA in English, both from the University of Illinois, and a PhD in Speech from Northwestern University. He taught film and film history at Northwestern for sixteen years. His love of film informed his biographies of Clint Eastwood, Ingmar Bergman, and John Huston, among others. He also co-authored a book on filmmaking, Basic Filmmaking (Arco, 1981), and an instructional guide for small-screen scribes, Writing for Television (Dell, 1988). And, of course, he wrote for television, and he penned novels based on TV series such as Rockford ( The Green Bottle , Forge, 1996 and Devil on My Doorstep , 1998) and CSI: New York (Dead of Winter, Pocket Star, 2005, Blood on the Sun, 2006, and Deluge, 2007).
Kaminsky created five series mysteries, and while I'm sure each has its adherents, I suspect that his twenty-four Toby Peters mysteries and his sixteen Porfiry Rostnikov mysteries would garner the most votes .
Toby Peters, a Hollywood P.I. in the 1940s, parlayed his 1977 debut— Bullet for a Star, in which he bails out Errol Flynn from a blackmail scam—into a very busy career rescuing movie stars and other celebrities from everything including murder to embarrassing peccadilloes. The series allowed Kaminsky to utilize his knowledge of films and film history, and half the fun of the Peters series is the detailed attention Kaminsky pays to the 1940s setting. Each detail—the cars, the music, clothes, and furniture fashions—is perfectly tailored to reflect the era.
Bullet for a Star took place in 1942, and the busy detective had only reached 1944 when the twenty-third volume, Mildred Pierced , appeared. By that year Toby was driving an old Crosley—a car that "runs on washing machine and refrigerator parts" and listening to The Aldrich Family on the radio. The projected cost of a post-war auto will be "$900 for most, as much as $1,400 for a luxury model." Would it were so.
An excellent continuing supporting cast led by Sheldon Minck, inept dentist and inventor; Gunther Wherthman, suave linguist and little person; and massive wrestler/poet Jeremy Butler adds to the pleasure. Among the celebrities featured are Howard Hughes, Bela Lugosi, Gary Cooper, Mae West, Eleanor Roosevelt, John Wayne, and Salvador Dalí.
As good as the Toby Peters series is, however, my favorite Kaminsky series stars Moscow policeman Porfiry Rostnikov. Two of the series novels were finalists for Edgar awards (Black Knight in Red Square and Tarnished Icons), and A Cold Red Sunrise won the 1989 Edgar for Best Novel. Rostnikov, the burly ex-wrestler with the bum leg (later an artificial leg), is a shrewd detective and a shrewd judge of character. Both skills are necessary to survive in a job where he must wage battles against criminals within and outside the Russian bureaucracy.
Rostnikov and his supporting cast evolve more than those in the Peters series, and fans will be grateful for a whisper to the living (Forge, $23.99), which provides a fitting capstone to the series. Rostnikov takes on a serial killer dubbed the Bitsevsky Maniac who is intent on surpassing the record kill total for a Russian murderer. Members of Rostnikov's staff are involved in other investigations as well as life-changing personal events. Son Iosef and Elena Timofeyeva are just days away from their wedding. Emil Karpo—reclusive, cadaverous, and relentless—finds an outlet for his affections. Sasha Tkach's wife, Maya, has tired of his endless affairs and taken their children and left him. And the bachelor, Arkady Zelach, who still lives with his mother, has to face the prospect of her imminent death.
Kaminsky keeps several investigations and personal dramas moving at a steady clip, with Rostnikov again managing to work his magic to thwart enemies on both sides of the law.
Links:
Kaminsky page on Google
Author page on Amazon
 In addition to penning mystery novels, William G. Tapply wrote numerous books about fishing and the outdoor life, was a contributing editor to Field & Stream magazine, and wrote a column for American Angler. As Writer in Residence at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, he taught English. He also wrote The Elements of Mystery Fiction: Writing the Modern Whodunit, published in 1995, with a second, expanded edition released by Poisoned Pen Press in 2004. For Elements, Tapply culled advice from top writers, editors, agents, and publishers including Otto Penzler, Fred Morris, Jeremiah Healy, Barbara Peters, and Robert L. Rosenwald.
The majority of William G. Tapply's crime fiction output featured attorney Brady Coyne, who, like his creator, frequently indulged his passion for fishing. Tapply's first mystery, Death at Charity's Point , won the 1984 Scribner Crime Novel Award and was a finalist for the British Crime Writers' Association First Blood Dagger. It was followed by an even better entry, The Dutch Blue Error , which demonstrated Tapply's plotting skills at their best. Tapply proceeded to take Coyne on twenty-five more adventures usually resulting from seemingly innocuous requests from his clients.
In 2001, Tapply's Brady Coyne and Philip R. Craig's J.W. Jackson teamed up in First Light for the first of three joint cases. It was an inspired match, as the authors' friendship and shared love of fishing and outdoor life made it a natural fit for their characters.
In 2005's Second Sight, Tapply and Craig wrote alternating chapters that occasionally required each to write the other's character. The result was so smooth that one author might have written the book. Before Craig's untimely death in 2007, the duo completed a third mystery, ironically titled Third Strike.
A trio of recent books, including his latest, dark tiger (Minotaur, $24.99), featured Stoney Calhoun, a man suffering from trauma-induced amnesia that has tarnished his memory of who he is, without damaging the language and weaponry skills he learned in his earlier life. Tapply began this series in 2004 with Bitch Creek, which introduced Calhoun and was followed by Gray Ghost in 2007. Calhoun lost his memory as the result of a lightning strike, but was able to forge a new life as part owner of a Maine bait shop and as a fishing guide. He is in thrall to a mysterious "Man in the Suit" who periodically shows up and gives Stoney assignments with the promise of revealing more about Stoney's past life. In Dark Tiger, Tapply's third Calhoun mystery, the Man in the Suit threatens to destroy Stoney's new life unless he goes undercover at an exclusive fishing camp to solve the murder of a sixteen-year-old girl and a federal agent. With nothing to go on, Stoney simply keeps probing until he finds a veritable hornet's nest of secrets. It is vintage Tapply, and leaves readers wondering what path Stoney would have eventually traveled to self-discovery.
Links:
William G. Tapply Website
Author page on Amazon
All Points Bulletin :
 AHMM contributor Doug Allyn's new novel, The Jukebox King, was recently published in Europe by Editions Payot & Rivages, Paris.
© 2009 Robert C. Hahn
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