Stuart M. Kaminsky

Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov is an honest policeman in a very dishonest post-Soviet Union. He and his team are searching for a serial killer who has claimed at least 40 victims....

A local curmudgeon who has been campaigning to end state-sponsored school funding is brutally killed....

With packs of stray wild canines roaming Moscow, it was inevitable that enterprising criminals would find a way to get rich. As dogfighting became big business, the Mafia got involved, and venues upgraded from alleys and garages to private arenas with padded seats....

During the widespread corruption of the Yeltsin era, violent crime has risen in Moscow by 200 to 300 percent, keeping Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov and his team at the Office of Special Investigation busier than ever....

Most days, the counters at Maish's Deli on Chicago's North Side are crowded with elderly Jewish men who trade stories and crack wise. But today, the mood at Maish's is grim. Someone has vandalized the local temple and stolen a priceless Torah, and only Abe Lieberman can set things right...

In the 1960s, Russian children wanted to be cosmonauts like Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space. But the Soviet Union is history, and Gagarin's glory is long gone. For the men and women aboard the decaying Mir space station, life is an unending series of near-disasters....

Toby Peters wakes up with a headache, a gun in his face, and a body on the hotel-room bed. He is less surprised by the gun than by the man holding it: John Wayne....

An ax-wielding monk hacks at the door. Toby Peters is on the other side, running as fast as his recently broken leg will allow....

The year 1942 is a bad time to stage Madame Butterfly....

Coffins fill the basement of a crumbling Los Angeles movie theater....

You can't trust a man who's dressed as Mae West, especially not in Mae West's house....

The uniformed man standing before Toby Peters is General Douglas MacArthur, a soldier who considers himself the only man who can defeat the Japanese....

Hollywood detective Toby Peters is asleep on his floor when the dentist who shares his office calls, wailing that his wife has left him....

A dentist dangles from the window of a swanky Park Avenue hotel, while Toby Peters, a Los Angeles detective who's very far from home, clutches the man by his jacket, which is tearing slowly, stitch by stitch....