The new crime thriller in the ever-funny and charming Stanley Hastings mystery series, featuring the only detective in New York City who doesn't carry a gun. Stanley Hastings finally felt like a real PI, staking out a New Jersey motel to get evidence on a woman's cheating husband. It should have been a piece of cake. Only the husband wasn't cheating, someone killed him, and the cops are trying to pin the murder on the man apprehended at the scene, who just happens to be Stanley. To clear his name, Stanley will wind up jumping bail, impersonating a police officer, staking out a mob boss, and appropriating a murder weapon from a sassy Jersey Girl who keeps trying to distract him by ripping her clothes off. And that's just for starters . . . Stanley Hastings is a private investigator who usually spends his time outing folks who fake injuries in minor car accidents in hopes of getting an insurance settlement. But now he has a real case—almost. He’s hired to get the goods on a philandering husband, but someone kills the hubby while Stanley is staking out the hot-sheet motel where the man evidently had a romantic rendezvous planned. Hapless Stanley is arrested at the motel because, well, he’s at the scene with the body. Now Stanley has a real case, like a real PI, even if he is his own client. In no particular order, he jumps bail, seriously annoys a Mob boss, talks a constantly disrobing New Jersey floozy out of the murder weapon, and impersonates a police officer. Stanley, who seems to have more in common with Barney Fife than Sam Spade, is actually a pretty fair detective, and, more important, his narration is witty, self-deprecating, and observant. The plot is logical in a convoluted sort of way, and the resolution is satisfying. Stakeout continues the Hastings tradition of murder with a wink and a smile. --Wes Lukowsky "The Stanley Hastings mysteries depend on subversively sly wordplay. In Caper , catching criminals is all very well, but in the violently verbal world he inhabits, Stanley would be happy just to win an argument." -- Marilyn Stasio ― New York Times Book Review "Parnell Hall succeeds in making Stanley Hastings one of a kind. Pleasantly reminiscent of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin." ― Wall Street Journal "The charm in Stanley Hastings lies in his chummy, loquacious, self-deprecating commentary as the narrator of his adventures." ― Washington Post Book World Parnell Hall is an Edgar, Shamus, and Lefty nominee, and is the author of the Stanley Hastings private eye novels, the Puzzle Lady crossword puzzle mystery series, and the Steve Winslow courtroom dramas. An actor, screenwriter, and former private investigator, Hall lives in New York City.