From 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.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Ambulance-chasing shamus and long-ago amateur thespian Stanley Hastings (Juror, Shot, etc.) runs up to Connecticut to help out his old college friend Herbert Drake by taking over the role of Bluntschli, in Arms and the Man, from the late Walter Penbridge. Opening night, which Stanley miraculously survives, is marred when he discovers the corpse of stage manager Goobie Wheatly, who had loudly humiliated him just the day before--so that he naturally becomes friendly local Chief Bob's chief suspect, beating out even such competitors as hammy TV actor Avery Allington and leading lady Margie Miller, whose amorous exploits can't leave her much time to sleep. The usual Hastings formula--mystery-mongering with amusingly lowbrow byplay substituting for detection. Middling for the series. --
Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
