A Few Minutes Past Midnight

This time out, in a raucous, new Hollywood thriller, private investigator Toby Peters -- who has cracked cases involving such classic movie luminaries as Humphrey Bogart, the Marx Brothers, John Wayne, and Mae West -- is gumshoeing for the legendary Charlie Chaplin.Rudely awakened one midnight by a sinister visitor wielding a very large knife, Chaplin has been threatened with death unless he stops production on his latest project, a film in which a series of wealthy old women are married and then murdered for their money. Toby's discovery that six rich elderly women have recently died in the movie capital strikes him as no mere coincidence. To find the connection and to protect Chaplin as well as a few very vulnerable older women from deadly jeopardy, Toby again enlists the aid of eccentric dentist Sheldon Minck, wrestler-poet Jeremy Butler, and multilingual Swiss midget Gunther Wherthman. The results, as always, are wacky, surprising, and riotous.