Friday 'Forgotten' Books: DETECTIVE (1987) by Parnell Hall

My entry this week in Patti Abbott's Forgotten Books Meme is DETECTIVE (1987) by Parnell Hall, the first of Hall's Stanley Hastings mysteries.

(To check today's complete list of forgotten or overlooked books and titles, please go to Patti's blog, PATTINASE. )

Stanley Hastings is the quintessentially cautious, easy to frighten, most emphatically NOT heat packing private eye working the streets of NYC grumbling all the while because what he really wants is to be is an actor. Realistically speaking, that dream is fast-fading. Stanley thinks he's pretty much useless as a detective and makes no bones about it but a man has to do some sort of work. He still considers himself an actor first, detective second. If there's any kind of audition on the horizon (unlikely as that may be), Stanley will figure out a way to fit it into his day of chasing around Manhattan.

Stanley is, admittedly, an ambulance chaser. He works insurance claims for yet another ambulance chaser: Richard Rosenberg, Attorney at Law and well on his way to millionaire-dom. Stanley gets ten bucks an hour.

"...Look, you know all the lawyers that advertise on TV for accident cases? Well, I work for one of them. He handles insurance claims. People fall down and break their legs, they see his ad on TV, they call him up. He calls me."

I'm usually laughing out loud when I'm reading a Stanley book, and a lot of the scenes I'm usually laughing out loud in, concern Richard Rosenberg. He is so awful in his focused greed,  he is a total shark. He is also hilarious. Despite his personality failures, he is also a brilliant lawyer with a complete grasp of the law as it applies to accident victims and also as it applies to swooping in when Stanley gets picked up by the cops. Richard loves to give the cops a hard time. His usual first question to Stanley is: "Did they lay a hand on you?" You gotta' love him.

There are a couple of ways in which Stanley distinguishes himself from other run-of-the-mill tough guy genre detectives. One, he's happily married to a woman named Alice, two, he has a cute little five year old son named Tommie. They all live in a two bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Rent: 750 a month. I know. WHAT?!! But remember this was back in 1987.

Anyway, there are now 17 books in the Stanley oeuvre. While I haven't read the very latest yet, I have read the rest over the years and mostly enjoyed them all, usually, as I said, laughing out loud.

The thing with Stanley is that he's most emphatically not what he thinks he is. He's a damn fine detective and while no Elvis Cole or Sam Spade or Phillip Marlowe, he is certainly NOT a coward. It is this personality quirk that so endears him to me. He honestly does not realize what a terrific guy he  is. A guy who, fumbling and stumbling, always manages to do the right thing. A hero in spite of himself. No wonder his wife Alice loves him.

"The problem with my wife, and it is a problem, is that she really likes me. At least that's the impression that she gives, and I have no way to prove it false. And more than just liking me, she respects me. She thinks I'm intelligent, and capable, and worthy, and she wants the best for me. In short she drives me nuts."

Not to worry, Stanley loves her back.

These books are most emphatically set in a gritty, often sweaty and swarthy NYC and its five boroughs (boros). Soon as Richard the lawyer hears of someone tripping on a sidewalk Stanley is off and running. The subway is his best friend. And I love how he plots his trips across the city, figuring out how long it will take him to hop over to the Bronx then back down to Brooklyn or wherever. He is a logistics expert, he has to be. Any New Yorker really has to be. Author Parnell Hall obviously knows the city well and it shows.

As I said, DETECTIVE was the first in this long-running series (all with one word titles). In it we're introduced to Stanley's world and are welcome to come along by the very engaging use of first person point of view. (I love first person point of view.) The immediate problem for Stanley this time out is that a guy shows up in his office one day and wants to hire him to do 'real' detective work. Somehow the sign on Stanley's door stating Stanley Hastings, Private Detective, has lured him in.

When I read DETECTIVE several years ago, I was grabbed immediately by the opening sequence. This is, to my mind, are some of best opening lines in the history of mysteries. I mean, I was hooked from the getgo. Laughing all the while.

"I want to kill someone."

"Who doesn't?"

"No, I mean it. I really want to kill someone."

"Everyone wants to kill someone. It's no big deal. I, myself, have a long list, usually headed by my wife."

"You don't understand. I'm going to do it."

For the first time, I gave him my full attention. I looked him over and tried to recall his name. I'm terrible with names.

I'm grinning while I'm writing this. Even after having quoted it so many times.

So here's what happens next. After Stanley explains that he can't take the case because he's not a 'real' detective, his would-be client goes out and gets himself killed. So, Stanley feels duty-bound to investigate much to every one's surprise, including the cops and Richard Rosenberg. They do not take it kindly.

If you want a good laugh, read this book. If you don't like to laugh while reading, then don't. But I have to ask you - why ever not?

To see a full listing of author Parnell Hall's prolific output, please link to to his fantastic fiction page here.

If you can't find a hard copy of the book, looks like an E version (iphone, ipad or ipod touch) is available for $2.99. Better than nothing.

Sunday Salon: Six Favorite Literary Heroes

Yesterday I posted Five Favorite Heroines and so, today I'm posting Six Favorite Heroes. Fair's fair - right? (It was only going to be five, but I fudged.)

1) La Bete (Beast) in BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.

I've been thinking a lot lately about my interest in gothic lit and later, gothic suspense lit and I've realized that the original Mr. Gothic is none other than Beast, in Beauty and The...

I'm going to post a bit more on this theory of mine at a later date, but for now I'm listing the brooding beasty of my dreams as one of my favorite heroes though in truth, the story is more about La Belle than it is about La Bete. But I adore Beast as the ultimate in misunderstood males. The ultimate example of never judge a book by its cover. (Though the painting on the cover of this issue of the famous tale is lovely. I love Barrett's interpretation of the beast.)

2) Mr. Rochester in JANE EYRE

Well, we had a discussion with Carolyn on A Few of My Favorite Books on the finer and/or lesser points of Jane Eyre's beloved Mr. Rochester. I came down on the side of 'yay' while quite a few came down on the 'nay'. But my mind will not be changed. Mr. R was a favorite of mine when I was a kid, and lo these many years later, he is still a favorite. Wretched man though he may be. To my mind, all dark, mysterious men bristling with secrets, spring from Mr. Rochester and he, of course, springs from Beast. (That's my theory in a nutshell, but I'll talk more about this at some point. It's Not Byron, It's the Beast.) Rochester is definitely a man of his times, an imperious, high-handed, selfish, wealthy playboy who has committed a capital error in judgement and must now pay for it. Jane Eyre, the equally mysterious young governess, is his penance. How these two work their way into each other's lives is still a story worth the reading.

3) Stanley Hastings in DETECTIVE by Parnell Hall, and the rest of the many books in this on-going series.

As different from my previous two choices as night from day, I would still follow Stanley Hastings down any dark alley, but mostly to protect him from the bad guys. Stanley is not, what you'd call, a typical private eye and yet that is exactly what he is. A Manhattan p.i. who works for an 'ambulance chasing' lawyer, mostly tracking down witnesses to accidents that may or may not have actually happened. This is a very funny series as Stanley spends a great deal of his time wisecracking to cover his feelings of ineptitude. He underrates himself on all counts and never thinks of himself as a hero, yet that is exactly what he is. Because Stanley has a pretty prickly conscience and always wants to do what's right, he generally gets things that need doing, done. Things come right in the end because Stanley interfered. The world-weary Stanley is an anomaly in the land of hard-boiled private eyes since he is happily married and goes home to his wife every night. He is also an amateur actor (who'd rather be a professional) and occasionally gets involved in 'little theater' productions. His on-going stint as a p.i. is just to bolster his income in between acting gigs - or so he tells himself.

4) Sherlock Holmes in all the Arthur Conan Doyle stories.

I should have listed him first, but simply put: I forgot. Horrors. Hey, I'm an old lady with faulty memory. I'm lucky I remember to get up in the morning.

Anyway, yes, Holmes if my very favorite hero of all time. Yes, he's a cold fish, but I suppose I love cold fish. At any rate, I love this cold fish. I am a sucker for brilliance, especially eccentric brilliance. I am also mindful of a kind heart and I believe that Holmes, for all his thinking machine protestations, has a kind heart and a true sense of justice. When he forgets to be human he has his Watson to keep him from going too deeply into the dark.

I first read Holmes as a kid and knew right away that he was a hero for the ages. No wonder that to this day he is still read, he still gets letters addressed to him, he still continues to be larger than life. I am also very fond of the Holmes created (or maybe I should say, expanded upon) by Laurie R. King in her wonderful Holmes/Russell series begun with THE BEEKEEPER'S APPRENTICE. King has taken Holmes and added flesh and blood to his normally skeletal frame. The combo of Doyle and King is a knock-out.

5) Mr. Darcy in PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Jane Austen

Not a big surprise. Though as I've said, Darcy can be a bit stiff-necked, he is still, at his best, the kind of gentlemanly hero many a young girl dreams of. The main thing that recommends him of course, is the fact that the smart and astute country lass, Miss Elizabeth Bennett, sees fit to fall in love with him. But Darcy can stand on his own. He is certainly dashing in a quiet sort of way, he is the epitome of stiff upper lip so he is not always complaining about this and that, or baring his soul to all and sundry like some modern men are known to do. I find that very attractive. He is also the kind of man who will sort things through and set things to rights if need be. He is the wealthy owner of a very fine house and has a very fine yearly income - nothing to make light of, that's for sure. AND he's not bad-looking, at least in the movies based on the novel. Always a good thing. PLUS, he gets to be taught a lesson in the end and is humbled by the need to learn and change for the better. (Though how deeply that change runs is another matter to be discussed at a later date.)

6) Radcliffe Emerson in all the Amelia Peabody books by Elizabeth Peters

In reality, this would be an impossible man to spend any great deal of time with, although he has his basic attractions and one tends to overlook much if the man is both brilliant and handsome. But in the fun-filled, fictional universe of the Amelia Peabody books, Emerson shines like the star he truly is. A star in his own universe. That's the most wickedly charming thing about him: he makes himself the star of his own universe and never deviates. It's up to Peabody, his equally eccentric and strong-willed wife, to smooth the waters if they get too disturbed. Though in truth, she seems to think that Emerson is entitled to behave as he pleases since he is the most brilliant archaeologist of this or any generation. Plus he does look awfully good in his work outfit of white shirt, sleeves rolled up to show his tanned muscular arms of course, and beige jodhpurs tucked into high black boots, not to mention his thick black, over-long hair blowing in the hot Egyptian winds. Sounds good to me.

Now I often say that the man, despite his attractions, is basically a lunatic (with all due respect) and I would be right most of the time. He has what I would call an Overpowering Personality, with all that those capital letters imply. He is eccentric with a capital E, brilliant (I believe I've mentioned that once or twice), possessive, kind-hearted, inclined to Dramatic Hyperbole, thinks nothing of rushing headlong into danger and has enough courage for three men. A brief example of his...uh, eccentricity: He pushes an annoyingly intrusive reporter down a flight of stairs at the hotel and then, almost immediately, denies he did any such thing - AND gets away with it because he actually believes he did nothing wrong. He cannot tolerate the slipshod methods of most of the other Egyptologists working archaeological digs and doesn't hesitate to let them know in the strongest possible voice and language. It's gotten to the point where the head of the Cairo Museum hides and refuses to come out when Emerson shows up. All of Emerson's native workers call him The Father of Curses. They adore him despite his many and various eccentricities. He is, in their estimation, a splendid man. In mine too.

Now of course, you have to post your own five or six or seven favorites.

I'll be posting more favorites myself as time goes by.

These sorts of lists are a great deal of fun to do.