Suspense

Stanley Hastings #13

by Parnell Hall

While tracking the source of threatening phone calls to bestselling author Kenneth P. Winnington's wife, P.I. Stanley Hastings becomes the prime murder suspect when those threats turn deadly

Genres: Mystery

314 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Eric_W · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another delightful entry into the Stanley Hastings series. In this one Hall aims at the publishing industry with agents scamming writers and writers scamming readers. Great fun. He’s pulled from his usual interviewing of prospective lawsuit clients in order to help the wife of an author. She is receiving threatening phone calls. Constant funny references to the publishing industry.

Here is our star ambulance-chasing-wannabe-actor/writer P.I. Hastings talking to his friend in the police department Sergeant MacAuliff about a potential suspect, Linda Toole, author of a mystery novel about cats.

MacAuliff made a face. “Then I hope she did it.”
“What?”
“They’re the worst, these cat women. They’re the ones give people the ideas cops are stupid jerks couldn’t solve a crime if it weren’t for some fucking cat.”
“I’m sure it’s not as bad as that.”
“Well, it isn’t good. You got a whole generation of people raised on a steady diet of “Murder She Wrote” who think crime isn’t solved by cops. . . the only crimes mystery writers can solve are the ones they write themselves.”

Some delicious ironies as characters talk about what a weak plot the mystery “real life”? mystery is compared to their novelistic attempts. At one point the author whose wife is being threatened flatly states that no suspense novel could ever be written in the first person since the reader knows no harm will come to the narrator. Hall then proceeds to prove the opposite.

There’s a great scene where ADA Frost has the principals together in his office - or at least their lawyers and they spend an hour just deciding on the ground rules. One says, “I'm not even willing to concede that I’m actually here.” He then launches into hypotheticals within hypotheticals.

Hall is a master of the comic mystery/suspense novel. Puns galore. Worth your time.

[Robert James · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one lived up to it's title. Another solid winner from this author.

[Robert Mckay · Rating 4 out of 5]

A woman, whose husband is a famous author (and insists on "author" rather than "writer"), has hired Stanley Hastings to look into threatening phone calls. In his bumbling fashion Stanley, whose normal private investigator work is signing up people for trip-and-fall cases for a Manhattan lawyer, tries to find out who's misusing the phone. And then someone starts killing people Stanley's talked to.

For me it's real tough outlining the plot of a Stanley Hastings book because he's such a Keystone Kops sort of investigator. But then Parnell Hall didn't write these books to exercise the intellect, but to entertain. They're just plain fun. So Stanley bumbles and fumbles, and finds things out without knowing what to make of them, and gets into situations without realizing it and without knowing what to do. The important part of a Stanley Hastings mystery isn't the puzzle, nor even the solution, but the fun. And there's plenty of that here.

Part of the fun comes from the famous author's contention that a) in a suspense novel the one who did it can be someone who's never popped up in the course of the story, and b) it's impossible to write such a novel in the first person. I have a suspicion that Parnell Hall got that notion from someone he'd met in real life, because here the one who's committing the murders is someone who doesn't appear at all in the book until the end - and all the Stanley Hastings books, including this one, are in the first person. I have a sneaking idea that Hall was gently twitting someone with this book, and that makes it even more fun.

[Stuart Macmartin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amusing. Clever. And extra star for doing the irony so well.

[Kat · Rating 5 out of 5]

read this whole book today, it was good! enjoyed it alot

this time stanly got a job with the rich wife of a publised author who was getting crank calls threatening her life

stanly was supposed to find out who was calling. he got a caller id machine and hooked it up. he got his cop friend mcgruff to find out the number was a payphone which he staked out as the calls usually came at 9:15am. but then the caller used a different payphone so that didnt work

then the people he interviewed to find out if they gave the unlisted phone number out started getting murdered

stanly felt bad about taht. the cop on the case was the one that beat him in a previous book, he thought it was the guy who got mad at the book signing at barns and noble. turned out he did make the calls, but not the murders

those were done by someone stanley got put in jail and got out on parole only stanly didnt know that. he lured him to a empty bldg, duct taped him to a chair, gaged him and injected him with somethign to paralies his muscles but he could still tell what was going on. he put a bomb in the lockers in the room. lured stanlys wife and son there right when the bomb was going to go off, stanly seeing this and could do nothing.

luckly mcgruff came along arrested the bad guy and got stanly and his family out just in time

hope the next book is waiting for me at the library tomorrow, i requested all the ones i didnt read.

[Sarah Glenn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Parnell Hall sets up the rules for writing suspense in this novel: literally. Kenneth P. Winnington, husband of Stanley Hastings' new client, writes suspense novels for a living and is happy to share them: Don't write in first person. Don't use a continuing character. Don't let the hero know the danger he's in.

Parnell Hall breaks all these rules in the commission of this novel, including one more, but revealing it here would give away the ending.

[Shelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another enjoyable outing with Stanley Hastings. This time, as the title suggests, we get a suspense element mixed into our PI mystery. We also get a cynical view of the world of publishing. It's a fun read, poking fun at the suspense genre as well as publishing.

[Amanda Lubold · Rating 2 out of 5]

the ending sequence was absolutely absurd, and really deviated from what Parnell Hall usually does

[Angie Boyter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable enough but not the best of the series. Very nice ending, though. Probably a 3.5

[Jim Moffett · Rating 3 out of 5]

10-00

[Tony · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hall sets out the rules that makes the Suspense genre completely different from Mystery, tries to write a book that spans both… and fails, quite painfully.

[Ron Judenberg]

to-read