Stuart Kaminsky, mystery writer
Stuart Kaminsky, 75, whose 70 books included one that the Mystery Writers of America deemed the best mystery novel of 1989, has died at a hospital in St. Louis.
Stuart Kaminsky, 75, whose 70 books included one that the Mystery Writers of America deemed the best mystery novel of 1989, has died at a hospital in St. Louis.
He had suffered from hepatitis C and moved to St. Louis earlier this year awaiting a liver transplant. But a stroke shortly after the move made him ineligible for the transplant, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Tuesday.
Both the Mystery Writers of America and Barnes-Jewish Hospital confirmed that he died Friday.
Mr. Kaminsky occasionally reviewed books for The Inquirer. His last review, of Dennis Lehane's The Given Day, appeared on Oct. 26, 1998.
His son, Peter Kaminsky, told the Post-Dispatch that the author grew up reading Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler and began writing himself as a boy.
He published his first novel, Bullet for a Star, in 1977. The Mystery Writers of America honored one of his works, A Cold Red Sunrise, as the best mystery novel of 1989. Nonfiction books included Clint Eastwood and John Huston.
The native Chicagoan also taught film and film history at Northwestern University and Florida State University.