"DETECTIVE" by Parnell Hall (B+)

When I read a book by a new author that is as entertaining and as well written as "Hitman," I am always inspired to go back to the beginning to see where Parnell Hall started out as a writer. "Hitman" is the 16th Stanley Hastings novel by Hall in a career that started back in 1987 with the publication of "Detective," an Edgar Award nominee for best first detective novel.

Twenty years of writing about this quirky New York City detective who doesn't carry a gun, is about as meek as they come, and who has a love-hate relationship with his far more intelligent wife. Hall's books are exquisitely well-written with a fast-moving dialogue that is a literary delight. The dialogue is mostly spoken by Hastings, who is always coaching his clients into some new form of linguistic obfuscation, but the clear cut banter between Stanley and his wife is about as good as it gets.

Unfortunately, in this first rendition of Hastings as a shamus, Stanley's relationship with his wife, Alice, is much more tentative than in "Hitman." I could have expected as much. The dialogue is still sharp, but the nuances are not as polished. Like a fine knife, twenty years of Hall polishing his craft has developed into a Stanley Hastings literary gold mine.

Furthermore, I had real problems with some of the off the wall decisions that Hastings makes in this novel. Stanley pulls off some really dumb stunts, and yet he comes out all right in spite of his poor choices. The guy is gutsy and methodical, but in this book he is also incredibly lucky. That he gets away with pulling off these shenanigans almost stretches my credulity to the breaking point. By all rights, he should have ended up dead. Maybe that is what makes for a good read, for this novel is far more tense than the more lighthearted "Hitman." Take your pick, for both are good reads.

Stanley Hastings as a character and a lifestyle are introduced here by Hall in the setup that has lasted until this day. We find out that Hastings and Richard Rosenberg, his employer, both graduated from liberal arts colleges with both hitting dead end careers after graduation. Thereafter their career paths diverged with the brilliant but ambitious Rosenberg going on to law school and becoming a very successful ambulance chaser, one of those guys who is constantly advertising on television for clients who feel that they have been wronged.

Stanley Hastings floundered around until Rosenberg hired him to investigate the claims that were called in by people who had seen his television ads. He encouraged Stanley to get his license to become a private investigator, which Hastings did. But the romance of being a private eye clashed with the reality of Stanley's mundane career of being an underpaid flunky for Rosenberg's firm. It isn't always fun to be paid by the hour and the mile to drive into the meaner parts of the city and walk into dangerous tenement buildings to interview sometimes sleazy clients who may be on the make.

Alice loves Stanley, but, more importantly, she is loyal to his interests, which are, of course, intimately combined with her own. She is well aware that Richard is getting rich off of Stanley's plodding efforts with far too little of that financial success rubbing off on them. Their apartment rent eats up most of their income with little left over for the finer things of life or for being able to provide better opportunities for their young son. Neither of them is happy with Stanley's hand to mouth existence, but the difference is that the less ambitious Stanley is by and large willing to live with it, while Alice, like many wives hoping for a better lot in life, is not.

So it is with some surprise that Stanley finds Morris Albrecht sitting across the office desk from him. Never good at names, Stanley later finds out that it is Martin Albrecht, not Morris Albrecht. Albrecht saw the title, "Stanley Hastings, Private Investigator," on the directory list of tenants in the building and decided to come on up. The dumbfounded Stanley had previously thought that the address label in the entrance was supposed to be for the benefit of postal employees, not to bring in clients.

And this client is something else. The first words out of his mouth are, "I want to kill someone." If you know anything at all about Hastings, you would know that this is the last thing that he wants to hear. A very funny discourse follows with Albrecht having problems being directed by Stanley to use pseudonyms derived from Disney cartoon characters. But it isn't funny later when Albrecht turns up dead in a parking lot and Stanley feels obligated to find out what happened to the poor man.

Partly out of a sense of obligation to Albrecht for having failed him in his hour of desperate need and partly out to prove something to himself and to his wife that he is not as useless as both of them secretly feel, Stanley embarks on his first case involving drug smuggling and murder. 1988, Olmstead Press, 256 pages.