The storytelling formula Stuart M. Kaminsky employs in his madcap mysteries featuring low-rent, World War II-era Los Angeles private eye Toby Peters has proved remarkably successful over more than a quarter century. Each entry in this series (beginning with 1977's Bullet for a Star) finds Toby taking on a celebrity client; being beaten silly at least once during the ensuing investigation; contending with a supporting cast of misfits ever eager to supply ludicrous asides; and eventually, despite meager expectations of his genius, unearthing clues enough to expose a murderer. Yet even with all those familiar ingredients in place, Now You See It, the 24th Peters tale, doesn't capture the magic of its recent predecessors. Which is ironic, since this yarn is all about magic. Toby, now pushing 50 and freshly partnered with his brother, choleric ex-homicide cop Phil Pevsner, is hired in June 1944 to protect "the world’s greatest living magician," Harry Blackstone. It appears that a wealthy but demented rival, "third-rate parlor magician" Calvin Ott, intends to ruin Blackstone's reputation while simultaneously enhancing his own. However, his process of humiliation seems more than a tad extreme, involving not only slaying a seedy PI during Blackstone's buzz-sawing-the-girl-in-half illusion, but also shooting the deceased's "tiger lady" girlfriend. Prepared to curb Ott's scheme, Toby is surprised when Ott himself is done in--knifed in the back of the neck during a form