Richard L. Hershatter (1923–2017)

Without a trace of the very serious love interest he was living with at the end of the fourth book in the series, Hung Jury, attorney and part-time spy Rand Stannard finds himself pressed into action one more time as Agent 6-X, and sent to Lebanon to track down a missing CIA agent. There isn't an ounce of plausibility in the whole story, which is full of admiration for Israel's spies and armed services, but it does include the usual Hershatter motifs: incredible escapes, chases, and nudity. And as an added bonus, camels. Stannard is always a fun companion for the reader to follow, and this adventure even marks the return of an old fiend (sic) from an earlier book in the series.

Like Hung Jury, this book appeared in 2001, which means that given the gap from the initial book in the series, Stannard should have been in his late fifties rather than thirty-something--but I guess an author who can suspend plausibility can certainly suspend time as well.

This is probably the last Stannard book. Hershatter is retired in Florida, 87 or 88 years old at this writing, and seems to limit his literary endeavors to a column for the Longboat Key News. It is extremely unlikely that his five Stannard novels will ever fill their own Library of America volume that you can put on the shelf next to Chandler and Hammett, but those of us who enjoy oddball books and writers, can still keep our thumbs crossed and imagine an alternate universe where Hershatter chose a career as a writer instead of a career in law, and where his books fill our shelves as we follow Stannard on one crazy adventure after another!… (mais)

Starting in 1969, Richard L. Hershatter wrote three spy novels in fairly rapid succession. The hero was a young attorney, Rand Stannard, who had been in Air Force Intelligence. He is drafted against his will back into service in each book and as Agent 6-X he has adventures that inevitably involve beautiful women, dastardly villains, incredible chases, and lots of really bad quips on the part of Stannard. These books were a lot of fun, but probably didn't sell too well. Hershatter gave up novels and concentrated on his own successful career as an attorney. In 2000, he retired to Florida, and in 2001, this novel, HUNG JURY, appeared.

It is a drastic change from the first three. Most importantly, it concerns Stannard's primary job as an attorney. Again, however, he finds himself drafted against his will, this time to serve as a public defender for a young black man accused of the kidnapping-rape-murder of the wife and daughter of the town's most prominent industrialist. Obviously, there isn't room in such a plot for Stannard's trademark bravado in the face of death, though Hershatter manages to let us know a few of Stannard's less than polite inner thoughts as the case proceeds. He soon determines that his client is in fact innocent, and the plot winds its merry way on from there, and wow, does it wind. Stannard falls in love with the pretty police detective who helped identify and arrest his client, and Hershatter doesn't spare us some sex to go along with the book's violence. This is an uneasy mix, but the book is a real page-turner, nevertheless. Jury selection is covered in detail, and if you're a legal junkie, it is pretty interesting. We get to see the jury deliberating, and that has its appeal as well. In the meantime, the town is wracked with violence as Aryans and other white supremacists converge to stir up trouble and take a few shots at folks. This aspect of the novel is almost secondary--Hershatter is really trying to pack too much into about 400 pages. The real mystery is, if Stannard's client didn't commit the murders, who did? And were the kidnapper/rapist and the murderer the same person?

Toward the end of the book, it gets even weirder, and Hershatter does get to end things with a chase--but it is a much more serious one than in the spy novels. Everything wraps up about as neatly as you could expect given the somewhat ragtag nature of the whole enterprise--this is not a Scott Turow novel. But then, I hardly expected it from Hershatter. Even with such a grim premise, Hung Jury manages to deliver a great deal of entertainment, and the character of Stannard is just the type of smart guy, cool under pressure, incorruptible, irresistible to women, owner of a great car, that we would all (at least us men) like to be. And undoubtedly he is who Richard L. Hershatter has dreamed of being for a long time. They even share the same alma mater, the University of Michigan Law School.

So if you are one of the relatively few people who have followed the adventures of Rand Stannard, by all means don't miss this one. After reading it, you'll have a much greater appreciation for him--and his creator.… (mais)

Hershatter perhaps carries it too far in his third tale of Rand Stannard, full-time struggling attorney, part-time DIA agent. If you have read the two previous books in the series, the setup is familiar, and the blunders he makes to get himself captured by the enemy are too similar. There isn't an ounce of plausibility in any of the rather magnificent set pieces Hershatter dreams up, but there is still a lot of fun to be had as Stannard (in the nude) maintains his cool in the face of a knife-wielding maniac, fixes a plane's landing gear in mid-air, battles an evil ex-Nazi and her murderous and libidinous son and daughter, and makes a few other narrow escapes that you'll have to read about to not believe. Stannard definitely needed a rest after this one. It would be more than thirty years before author Hershatter returned to the character, with another spy book, The Man Who Hated Taffy, and a courtroom drama featuring Stannard in his day job as a lawyer. I'm sure I'll get to those in time. As silly as Hershatter's books are, filled with knowingly awful puns and one-liners, they are also a lot of fun to read.… (mais)

Attorney and part-time DIA agent Rand Stannard returns in the sequel to Hershatter's amusing The Spy Who Hated Licorice. In this one, the criminal organization is called CARAMEL (and the book was republished a few years ago with the title "The Spy Who Hated Caramel".) As in the first novel, this is an odd mixture of action and humor as Stannard tangles with a group of nutty folks trying to set off a war between the US and France so that they can take back Algeria, which they are pissed at DeGaulle for losing. To get things started, they are going to use an H-bomb that happened to practically drop into their laps one day. I probably need to read my history a little better to really understand the nuances here about the Algerian situation, but probably there really aren't any. No situation is too grim for Hershatter and his hero to crack jokes about. But along the way there are great scenes, including an airplane hijacking, a wild ride in a helicopter, and perhaps the most unusual demise of an over-amorous female I have ever come across. And the climax, involving Stannard and the bomb is priceless. Overall, this one is a notch above The Spy Who Hated Licorice because it is just that more outrageous. Nothing fazes Stannard, and in the face of death he keeps quipping away. Familiarity with this character doesn't breed contempt. I have ordered the third book in the series, "The Spy Who Hated Fudge". Many years later, after retiring from the law, Hershatter wrote a fourth book in the series, "The Spy Who Hated Taffy" along with a serious novel, "Hung Jury" which has Stannard actually doing some lawyering for a change.… (mais)