Detective - Softcover

Hall, Parnell

3.74

304 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451400704 ISBN 13: 9780451400703

Publisher: Berkley, 1988

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This debut entry in the author's mystery series features actor-turned private investigator Stanley Hastings. Poor Stanley! In a word, his pursuits end in Failure. So when Martin Albrecht comes to him with a case for a real detective, Stanley turns him away. Unfortunately, Stanley's damned path leads to his finding Albrecht dead. Well now he's been challenged, so he has to take the case; maybe Stanley will finally prove that he's a real detective. To solve this case Stanley must descend into a modern-day inferno that consists of drugs and mob operations. Will he come out of it alive? A first novel from Parnell Hall, playwright and screenwriter, and actor, introduces erstwhile detective Stanley Hastings who, while engaged in phony detective work in the aid of an insurance swindle, stumbles into his first real case. This is the author's first novel and the initial book in his now lengthy series featuring this Manhattan-based detective, a most unusual private eye. When an almost client turns up dead, this PI goes into an underworld of coke and kicks among the Big Boys of Miami and New York, taking the kind of risks that can get a guy real dead -- real fast.

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From Publishers Weekly:

When Martin Albrect stumbles into his detective agency, babbling that he's about to be murdered, Stanley Hastings is incredulousuntil he reads the next day that Albrect has been brutally shot. Albrect has left behind a series of clues, and Hastings feels honor-bound to take the case. He soon deduces that Albrect was a drug runner who double-crossed some members of a cocaine-trafficking ring. Hastings's investigations lead him to New York's Lower East Side, Miami and East Hampton. It's almost an academic exercise for Hastings, until he discovers the killers are on his track. Hastings is a novel addition to the detective genrea down-on-his-luck writer, short-tempered and opinionated, who moonlights as a detective (as does the author) and who has more brains than brawn. There are some obvious flaws to this bookHastings sometimes indulges in diatribes that have disturbing racial overtonesbut on the whole, Hall's good ear for gritty dialogue and his ability to evoke New York's neighborhoods and people make an entertaining mystery.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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