Toby Peters is a broke Los Angeles private detective in the 1940s whose specialty is doing quiet jobs for movie stars. In this one the client is Cary Grant, being blackmailed with a photograph and tangled up in wartime counterintelligence work he was actually doing. Kaminsky wrote dozens of these and they run on affection for old Hollywood — the Farraday Building, the dentist Toby shares an office with, the wrestler sidekick, and a real celebrity per book. Light, fast, and much better on period Los Angeles than it has any obligation to be.
To Catch a Spy