Actor
A Stanley Hastings Mystery
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
What's this? Reluctant PI Stanley Hastings playing the lead in George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man on two days notice? What could possibly go wrong? Well, a backstage murder during dress rehearsal for starters.
"A real romp. Hilarious. Wins our vote for Best Performance by an Actor on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown."
-Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review
"If you enjoy the backstage backgrounds of writers like Ngaio Marsh and Simon Brett, and if the prospect of an unashamedly old-fashioned whodunit with no apparent concern beyond reader pleasure is attractive, this is your book."
-Jon. L. Breen, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
"Easily one of the best backstage murder mysteries I have read."
-Mystery Review
"The standing ovation is well deserved."
-Publishers Weekly
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Stanley Hastings is a frenzied PI whose six comic misadventures while investigating accident cases for a Manhattan law firm have been chronicled in Shot , Detective et al. 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. Removed from his urban setting, Stanley stumbles through a few uncharacteristically slow moments, but soon he is up to his painted face in leads, tangled motives and cold sweat as he faces a matinee audience, planning to resolve the case with a surprising deviation from the Shavian script. The standing ovation is well-deserved.
