title: A Fool for a Client: A Stanley Hastings Mystery (Stanley Hastings Mysteries)
author:  Parnell Hall 
description: <em>A Fool for a Client</em> is one of Hall's best ... Hall handles comic dialogue as well as any in crime fiction, and while Stanley gets the brunt of most of it, he usually manages to solve the crime before anyone else.<br /> - <strong><em>Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine</em></strong><br /><br />A joy to read...well-plotted and confidently written...equal parts Perry Mason and Groucho Marx is Hall at the top of his game.<br /> - <strong><em>Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine</em></strong><br /><br />Pleasures can be found in the swashbuckling style and canny legal maneuvers.<br /> - <strong><em>Publishers Weekly</em></strong><br /><br />In a dry comic voice, Stanley narrates this account of his furtive investigation into three murders that the other tourists observe with remarkable sang-froid.<br /> - <strong>Marilyn Stasio, <em>The New York Times Book Review (on 'Safari')</em></strong><br /><br />The Stanley Hastings mysteries depend on subversively sly wordplay. In the violently verbal world he inhabits, Stanley would be happy just to win an argument.<br /> - <strong>Marilyn Stasio, <em>The New York Times Book Review (on 'Caper')</em></strong><br /><br />Parnell Hall succeeds in making Stanley Hastings one of a kind.<br /> - <strong><em>The Wall Street Journal (on 'Caper')</em></strong>
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  Praise for Parnell Hall’s BLACKMAIL
  
  “Every page quivers with comic frustration and the result is an absolute joy.”
  
  —Kirkus (starred)
  
  “Parnell Hall succeeds in making Stanley Hastings one of a kind .... BLACKMAIL
  is pleasantly reminiscent of an earlier era, when detectives like Nero Wolfe
  and Archie Goodwin brought some humor to their chores.”
  
  —The Wall Street Journal
  
  “Here is that rare and highly readable type of novel, the one told mostly in
  dialogue—and very good dialogue it is, too .... Blackmail is a fun page-
  turner.”
  
  —The Denver Post
  
  “Stanley’s cases also have going for them some of the deftest and trickiest
  puzzle-plotting in the field today.”
  
  —Jon L. Breen, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine
  
  “The characters are funny, the dialogue sings, and Hall continually confounds
  the reader’s expectations.”
  
  —Sparkle Hayter, Toronto Star
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  BLACKMAIL
  
  Parnell Hall
  
  Copyright © 1994, 2010 by Parnell Hall
  
  Published by Parnell 