A Fool for a Client: A Stanley Hastings Mystery: 0 (Stanley Hastings Mysteries) - Tapa dura

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.--Marilyn Stasio

Parnell Hall succeeds in making Stanley Hastings one of a kind.

Pleasures can be found in the swashbuckling style and canny legal maneuvers.

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.--Marilyn Stasio

A joy to read...well-plotted and confidently written...equal parts Perry Mason and Groucho Marx is Hall at the top of his game.

A Fool for a Client 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.

A sensational murder trial! A young woman found naked and stabbed to death in her apartment! The woman was the girlfriend of his boss, Richard Rosenberg, and the hotshot lawyer is charged with killing her.Now Richard's in court fighting for his life, and Stanley's out on the firing line trying to dig up some evidence in his favor. It won't be easy. The murdered woman was a law clerk for a prominent judge, and everyone Stanley needs to question is currently tied up in a high-profile Global Banking trial.As Stanley races back and forth between two courtrooms, searching for the key to the mystery through investigative techniques that could easily get him charged as an accessory, every fact tends to point to Richard's guilt: DNA evidence proves he is the man who had sex with the victim just before she died, eyewitnesses put him at the scene of the crime, and his fingerprints are on the murder weapon.In desperation, Richard resorts to a series of courtroom tactics so outrageous they would make Perry Mason blush. Before the case is over, everyone in the courtroom will be convinced that not only does Richard Rosenberg have a fool for a client, but the client has a fool for a lawyer.