High Midnight

Toby Peters tries to protect a Western star against a vicious salami-mogul.

Toby Peters is enjoying a moonlighting gig as the house detective at a hot-sheets motel when two giant men come to take him for a ride. They're Chicago toughs, visiting Los Angeles with their boss, Lombardi, who has come west to establish himself as the cold-cuts king of California. His message to Peters is simple: Stop asking questions and tell Cooper he didn't find anything. Or else. 'Cooper' is Gary Cooper, who recently hired a detective named Toby Peters to quiet a blackmailer. But that wasn't Toby -- it was the dentist who shares his office. The amateur sleuth bungled the case so badly that now they're all in danger from Lombardi, the blackmailers, and anyone else with a hot head and a .45. If Toby Peters can't sort this out quickly, the next batch of Lombardi hot dogs will be made of one hundred percent pure-ground detective.