Stuart M. Kaminsky has 9 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 4 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 1 ratings. The most-rated is Poor Butterfly.
Poor Butterfly
Summary
The year 1942 is a bad time to stage Madame Butterfly. Although Puccini's masterpiece is a perennial favorite of the San Francisco opera crowd, its sympathetic depiction of a Japanese girl causes tension in the dark months following Pearl Harbor. Newspaper editorialists rage against the production, opera buffs picket the theater, and a note appears nailed to the house door, threatening violence against the cast and crew. When the first workman dies, the maestro calls Toby Peters, a Los Angeles detective who works discreetly for Hollywood's rich and famous. Two days remain before the opening night, and the body count continues to rise. As he hunts for this self-styled phantom of the opera, Toby falls for one of the company starlets. They must tread lightly, or risk a death more dramatic than anything Puccini ever dreamed up.
©1990 Stuart Kaminsky. Recorded by arrangement with The Mysterious Press.com, LLC. (P)2014 HighBridge Company
Denial
Summary
Lew Fonesca is a man who does things for people. He makes small problems go away and tries to keep the larger ones from landing his clients in jail. He finds deadbeats, errant spouses, and generally keeps the populace of Sarasota on the up and up. Now Lew is faced with one case that will try his patience...and another that may break his heart. The first involves an elderly woman who swears she's witnessed a murder in her old age home despite the fact that everyone she tells her story to, her family, the hospital staff, and finally the cops, all tell her that it just couldn't have happened. The other has Lew trying to find out the identity of a hit and run driver who killed a 14-year-old boy. This task dredges up old memories and a lot of pain, for Lew fled Chicago years ago, after a drunk driver killed his beloved wife. As Lew begins to dig deeper into both cases he finds that they are tied together in ways he can't hope to untangle. And when someone tries to run him down, Lew knows that he's getting close to some nasty truths and that he is going to have get the answers if he is to survive.
©2005 Stuart Kaminsky (P)2005 Books on Tape, Inc.
Always Say Goodbye
Summary
Four years ago Lew Fonesca's wife was struck and killed in a hit-and-run within sight of their apartment. He fled Chicago, driving mindlessly until his car gave up the ghost in Sarasota, Florida. Working from a cheap office behind the Dairy Queen on Highway 301, he makes a threadbare living as a process server and savors his clinical depression like a fine wine. Then his therapist, who alternately acts as his conscience and his sparring partner, tells him it's time he goes back to Chicago and close the door to the past so that he can finally get on with the rest of his life. Lew hates to admit it, but he's beginning to see her point. So Lew returns to his home town, to friends and family...and to a grief that threatens to engulf him. He's resolved to dig until he finds out who killed his wife. In doing so, he'll uncover both sweet and painful memories of his past. He'll also confront a murderer who'll not hesitate to kill again to make sure hidden secrets stay buried.
©2006 Double Tiger Productions, Inc. (P)2007 BBC Audiobooks America
Retribution
Summary
Lew Fonesca is still a freelance process server, still has his office behind a Dairy Queen in Sarasota, and is still the friend of the poor and outcast. Now, he has two more cases he doesn't want, cases that will lead unerringly to the discovery of murder. In one of them, he must stop Adele Tree, the runaway teenager he saved from vice in Vengeance, from destroying the unpublished manuscripts of a famous reclusive author. In the other, Lew accepts the aid of his armed friend Ames McKinney in tracking down the lost sister of a penniless man.
©2001 Stuart M. Kaminsky (P)2001 Books on Tape, Inc.
The People Who Walk in Darkness
Summary
Inspector Rostnikov is a Russian bear of a man, an honest policeman in a very dishonest post-Soviet Russia. Known as "The Washtub", Rostnikov is one of the most engaging and relevant characters in crime fiction, a sharp and caring policeman as well as the perfect tour guide to a changing (that is, disintegrating) Russia. Surviving pogroms and politburos, he has solved crimes, mostly in spite of the powers that rule his world. In The People Who Walk in Darkness, Rostnikov travels to Siberia to investigate a murder at a diamond mine, where he discovers an old secret...and an even older personal problem. His compatriots head to Kiev on a trail of smuggled diamonds and kidnapped guest workers, and what they discover leads them to a vast conspiracy that not only has international repercussions but threatens them on a very personal level.
©2008 Stuart M. Kaminsky (P)2008 BBC Audiobooks America
Midnight Pass
Summary
Lew Fonesca is a Sarasota part-time process server still mourning his dead wife and trying to get through life without any complications. But his life is full of them. His shrink wants him to dump his grief so he can have more of a life; a pretty social worker who has helped him in the past wants to "deepen" their friendship; and his big heart prevents him from saying no to people who need his help. A distraught father comes to Lew to track down his wife and two kids, whom Lew suspects ran off with the man's best friend. When people start showing up dead, Lew knows he's in way over his head - and this time he may not be able to make it come out okay.
©2003 Stuart M. Kaminsky (P)2003 Books on Tape, Inc.
A Whisper to the Living
Summary
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. And then there is the problem of protecting a visiting British journalist who is working on a story about a Moscow prostitution ring. In doing so Rostnikov and his team uncover a chain of murders that lead to a source too high to be held accountable if the police want to keep their jobs - or their lives.
©2009 Double Tiger Productions, Inc. (P)2010 BBC Audio
Bright Futures
Summary
Lovable everyman Lew Fonesca, the Man Who Makes Things Work in Sarasota, is once again faced with cases that try his patience and test his sanity. A local curmudgeon who has been campaigning to end state-sponsored school funding is brutally killed. A recent graduate of a public high school for the gifted is arrested for the crime and turns to Lew for help. A semi-retired and much beloved singer of children's songs is being anonymously pushed to leave Sarasota, threatened with exposure as a sexual predator. It is up to Lew to uncover the blackmailer and determine whether there is any truth to the accusation. Lew has decided that life is worth more than just going through the motions. But will the good life that Lew so richly deserves elude him as he uncovers some very sad truths? His final choice: do the right thing and see his happiness evaporate...or betray a trust and stay happy....
©2008 Double Tiger Productions, Inc. (P)2008 BBC Audiobooks America
Vengeance
Summary
Three years ago Lew Fonseca quit his job as a process server with the State Attorney's Office in Cook County, Illinois, and drove his rattling Toyota south to escape the memories of his beloved late wife. Headed for Key West, the Toyota broke down in a Dairy Queen parking lot in Sarasota, Florida. Buoyed by the friendship of a few trustworthy souls, Lew settled there, making ends meet by doing some investigative work for local attorneys. Now, Lew is hired by Carl Sebastian, one of Lew's lawyer's clients, to find his missing wife. Following up on a few leads, Lew finds himself being trailed by a mysterious burly man, and saddled with another missing person case, this time a runaway teen. With the help of some friends, Lew seems to be getting closer and closer to Melanie, but will he find her before the unthinkable happens?
©1999 Double Tiger Productions, Inc. (P)2001 Books on Tape, Inc.