Stanley Hastings Books in Order

Stanley Hastings is a struggling actor and writer who chases accident leads for a lawyer, not a real detective. Then his first true case lands in his lap, and he has to figure it out fast.

Stanley tries to help a suburban mother tricked into working for an escort service. Instead he gets pulled into prostitution, pornography, blackmail, and murder in a nasty corner of Manhattan.

Doing Sergeant MacAullif a favor sends Stanley to Atlantic City to watch a wayward son-in-law. Naturally, the trip ends in grand larceny trouble and a murder investigation.

Stanley has a terrible problem signing up negligence clients for Richard Rosenberg. Somebody keeps strangling them before he can get there.

Stanley finally lands his first paying client and is promptly framed for murder. Not getting paid turns out to be the smallest problem in the whole deal.

Jury duty looks hopelessly dull until one of the jurors is murdered. Stanley turns a boring civil case into a murder investigation, complete with a very strange courtroom climax.

Stanley tries to prove his client did not kill her lover and gets shot for his efforts. Getting fired and dragged before a grand jury does not improve the week.

Stanley is pressed into playing the lead in *Arms and the Man* on two days' notice. A backstage murder during dress rehearsal makes the performance a lot harder to finish.

A blackmail payoff involving explicit photographs should have been simple. Instead Stanley fails to stop the blackmailer, and nearly everyone he talks to afterward winds up dead.

Stanley finally sells a screenplay, only to learn the production is a gloriously awful karate movie. Then members of the crew start dying, and his big break turns into another murder case.

When Richard Rosenberg defends a man accused of murder, Stanley is sent out to investigate. Before long he is in court himself, teetering between useful witness and contempt citation.

Stanley's client is lying to him, which would be manageable on its own. The bigger problem is the crooked cop trying to pin three murders on him.

Stanley is hired to protect a suspense writer's wife from threatening calls, though bodyguard work is not exactly his thing. The calls keep coming, and the danger gets much more real.

Stanley and Alice head to a New England bed-and-breakfast for rest and quiet. Instead they find recipes, suspicious guests, and a murder case that even the cat seems ready to solve.

A young basketball star drops dead during practice, and Stanley ends up investigating what really happened. It is a short case with sports pressure, hidden motives, and another body where no one expected one.

Stanley takes on an ex-con being blackmailed over an old killing and winds up knee-deep in fresh trouble. Crime scenes, extortion, lawyers, and cops all get messier once Stanley starts helping.

Stanley is pulled into the murder of a soccer coach and has to sort through a neatly tangled little mess. It is a short Hall mystery, quick on its feet and full of trouble.

When a poker player drops dead, Stanley Hastings has to read the table, the players, and the lies in the room. He ends up dealing a very dangerous hand to trap the killer.

Stanley never planned to work for a hitman, but suddenly he is trying to keep one alive long enough to learn who wants him dead. It is classic Hall, funny, tense, and deeply inconvenient for Stanley.

Stanley takes what looks like an easy job, finding out why a teenage girl is skipping school. Naturally, it turns into something bigger, stranger, and far more dangerous than he was promised.

At a snowbound Vermont inn, Stanley and Alice find a dead body under the Christmas tree. With the local police stuck, Stanley, and even their dog Zelda, have to help sort out the crime.

Stanley cannot believe he has been hired to follow a vampire. The joke stops being funny when the case turns deadly and he realizes his strange new client may not be joking at all.

A routine surveillance job leaves Stanley standing over a corpse when the police arrive. To clear himself, he has to jump bail, improvise wildly, and chase the truth through another beautifully awful mess.

Stanley and Alice finally make it to Zambia for a dream trip, only to find murder in the middle of the tour. Wildlife, odd fellow travelers, and real danger turn the vacation into another case.

Stanley's boss, Richard Rosenberg, is charged with murdering his girlfriend, and the trial becomes a circus. Stanley has to survive outrageous courtroom tactics and solve the case before the defense collapses.

Stanley's client is dead, but that does not stop the case from getting worse. He keeps digging anyway, following a trail of danger and suspicion that someone hoped would die with the victim.

Stanley Hastings is caught with a dead naked woman, and the police are not feeling patient. To clear his name, he has to solve the case before the evidence, and his luck, run out.