Scam - Hardcover

Hall, Parnell

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786212101 ISBN 13: 9780786212101

Publisher: Thorndike Pr, 1997

Synopsis

When actor-cum-sleuth Stanley Hastings investigates the complicated conspiracy an investment broker claims is being hatched against him, all fingers point to the broker himself, and players begin falling one by one

About this title

Review:

Parnell Hall's Scam proves once and for all that murder can be funny--as well as mind-boggling. The charming hero of Hall's series of mysteries is Stanley Hastings, a nonviolent, slightly neurotic investigator who pays the rent by working for a New York negligence lawyer. When one of Stanley's clients claim he's being set up by one of the partners in an investment firm, the erstwhile PI doesn't take him seriously--until the bodies pile up and Stanley falls under suspicion of murder.

Hall performs miraculous feats in the course of this rollicking tale: he constructs a remarkably labyrinthine plot and manages to tie off all the loose ends while maintaining a madcap pace marked by hilarious crosstalk and knockabout interactions between Stanley and his cop foil that would do P. G. Wodehouse proud. For crime and comedy under one cover, Scam is a perfect choice.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Wendy and Janet, ambulance-chasing lawyer Richard Rosenberg's twimbo secretaries, are on vacation, and Richard's penny-ante p.i. Stanley Hastings has a rare case of his own. That's the extent of the good news. The bad news is that investment advisor Cranston Pritchert is the world's worst client. He's convinced that the bosomy blond who picked him up at a singles bar and left him holding his head in a nearby gutter trying to remember what happened next was setting him up in some way that was related to a proxy fight for control of Philip Greenberg Investments. But Stanley has to battle his own client for every ounce of cooperation. Worse, he suspects whiny Pritchert's started to manufacture evidence (why?) indicating a scam against himself. Worse still, Pritchert is killed, and the NYPD--not Stanley's usual nemesis, Sgt. MacAullif, but an even nastier cop who seems to have a personal grudge against MacAullif and everybody he's ever met--is convinced that Stanley is the killer. It doesn't help when they find evidence against Stanley on the scene of two related homicides. But related how? As usual, Hall (Trial, 1996, etc.), like Rumpelstiltskin, takes slender material that would serve another writer for a middling short story and spins a gossamer web of riddles by turns puzzling, suspenseful, and hilarious. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Thorndike Pr
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0786212101
• ISBN 13: 9780786212101
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 426