Publishers are beginning to convert more and more of their slightly older titles - books published B.K. (before Kindle) - from paper to electronic form. That is good news for Kindle readers because these books normally cost less than new releases and many are old favorites that their fans want to read again on the Kindle. In this category are the adventures of Stanley Hastings, Private Eye, a series of fourteen books published from 1987 to 2010 and written by Parnell Hall. Eight are now available in Kindle editions with more on the way.
Stanley Hastings is an unlikely private detective. He doesn't carry a gun, is scrupulous about avoiding fist fights and has only his gift of repartee to defend himself, but somehow - at times in spite of himself - he gets the bad guys (or gals, as the case may be). If you like your murder mysteries with a Marxian flare - Groucho, that is, check out:
Actor. Parnell Hall, c1993. Print length: 273 p. Kindle edition: $2.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Having interviewed people with broken legs and photographed holes in the sidewalks for 20 years, Stanley has nearly forgotten that he was an aspiring actor before he took up detecting. He's overjoyed when an old theater chum asks him to step into a production of Shaw's Arms and the Man in the wilds of Connecticut just two short days before opening. There he runs afoul of a persnickety stage manager and the arrogant no-talent, soap opera-trained star and gets to share a dressing room with a young actress of few inhibitions. When the stage manager is stabbed to death, Stanley must call on his real-life skills to extricate himself from the role of leading suspect." - Publishers Weekly.
Blackmail. Parnell Hall, c1994. Print length: 278 p. Kindle edition $2.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"New York private eye Stanley Hastings earns the lion's share of his income taking statements in personal-injury suits. Despite misgivings, he takes on a blackmail case. Actually, it starts out as more of a messenger job, since his client, Marlena, just wants him to deliver a package of money to a man who has some pictures. Well, one thing leads to another, and Marlena turns up dead, prompting an NYPD cop to finger Stanley for either withholding information or the murder itself. Soon there's another dead woman and a link to a former porno star married to a cop." - Booklist.
Movie. Parnell Hall, c1995. Print length: 280 p. Kindle edition $2.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"New York City private eye Stanley Hastings plays against type. He's happily married, dislikes the PI business, and wants to be something else . . . like a screenwriter. That's why he's so excited when his courtroom drama catches the eye of filmmaker Sid Garfellow, who hires Stanley to write the screenplay for a martial-arts action flick. The low-budget production gets off to a rocky start when a homeless man is found beaten to death on the set." - Booklist.
Trial. Parnell Hall, c1996. Print length: 311 p. Kindle edition $2.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"...Stanley Hastings is back, assisting sleazy personal-injury attorney Richard Rosenberg as he prepares to defend his first murder suspect. Anson Carbinder is accused of killing his wife, but he claims he was in an all-night poker game at the time of the murder. The other six men at the game will substantiate his alibi, but as Hastings digs into this story (which includes an ingenious clue), his doubts begin to multiply." - George Needham for Booklist.
Scam. Parnell Hall, c1997. Print length: 309 p. Kindle edition $2.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
Stanley Hastings client is lying to him. But that's a mere annoyance. The crooked cop framing him for three murders is a problem.
"What Mr. Hall does to the private-eye formula is very funny, but it is not frivolous. His puzzles, for all their manic nonsense, are fiendish constructions of sound logic." - Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review.
Suspense. Parnell, c1998. Print length: Kindle edition $2.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Stanley Hastings, bodyguard? Come on, he doesn't even carry a gun. But a best-selling suspense writer's wife who is getting threatening phone calls hires Stanley to make them stop. Bad move. The fact the calls continue is the least of her worries." - Amazon.
Hitman. Pegasus, c20007. Print length: 272 p. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"Private eye Stanley Hastings doesn't want for idiosyncrasies, as fans of this long-running 'unconventional' and 'very funny' (says the New York Times) mystery series know. For instance, he doesn't carry a gun. So he seems a particularly improbable choice, among all of New York City's private investigators, for the cold-eyed Martin Kessler. Not that Kessler requires firepower. He's got a gun of his own - an automatic with a long, ugly silencer - although he'd like to retire it. A contract killer who wants out of the game, Kessler hires Stanley mostly to watch his back in the event that someone of similar professional skills is shadowing him. Someone is, in fact, only Stanley fails to spot him and dead bodies are soon piling messily up. The hapless Stanley thus begins an odyssey around Manhattan in his attempt to uncover just what did go down..." - Amazon.
Caper. Pegasus, c2010. Print length: 256 p. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Enabled.
"New York private investigator Stanley Hastings needs a change of pace. The only jobs his boss, personal-injury lawyer Richard Rosenberg, gives him are routine trip-and-fall cases. So when a beautiful woman comes to Stanley and asks him to rescue her teenage daughter, Stanley's knight-errant genes kick into overdrive. Mom thinks daughter may be turning tricks. OMG! Stanley first tries the "scared straight" technique he remembers from an old movie. It doesn't go well..." - Wes Lukowsky for Booklist.
If you've yet to sample Parnell Hall's Stanley Hastings mysteries, he may convince you to give them a try with his catchy music video The King of Kindle. Looks like until recently Hall was republishing his own works for the Kindle at a very reasonable price and to his credit, all are available with the text-to-speech feature enabled.
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