Reviews

Favor by Parnell Hall

ericwelch's review

4.0

Poor Stanley Hastings. While attempting to do a favor for his old antagonist/friend Sgt. MacAuliffe who is worried about his daughter, Hastings gets himself charged with two murders and grand larceny. Needless to say he has a way of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Stanley’s main job is working for an ambulance-chasing attorney by signing up clients in wrongful injury suits. I’ve read several of the Hastings series as well as Hall’s Puzzle Lady books, and they never fail to entertain. Each has a comic flair in the dialogue and endearing characters. Leave your literary criticism at home as well as the rational part of your brain and just enjoy them for what they are: just good light, entertainments.

tony's review

4.0

This time our bumbling PI gets talked into doing a favour for a cop friend who's convinced his daughter's husband is up to no good. All Stanley has to do is go up to Atlantic City and follow him around to find out if anything untoward is happening. Whereupon Stanley not only uncovers the husband's involvement with a loan-shark and a crooked casino dealer, but also discovers another PI, following the wife. He pulls a quick trick to steal that PI's photos from the lab (we're still in the 1980s here) to see if there's anything he should know there, except before he can work out what's going on he finds himself quickly embroiled in a double murder… again with himself as the number one suspect.

Hall starts to find his pace here — this is a definite notch up from the first two in the series. ★★★☆