Melancholy Baby (Sunny Randall)

Robert B. Parker has been writing Spenser novels for more than 3 decades now, and his two other series (Sunny Randall and Jesse Stone) are also entertaining. While they're good, the main characters especially tend to be somewhat derivative of Spenser. Sunny Randall, to this point, has been a smaller, younger, female version of Spenser. Now, with the help of Spenser's lady love Susan Silverman, Sunny goes into therapy in order to figure out why she can't fully commit to a relationship. The result is some character development (with a detour to revisit her relationship with her parents, especially her father) and finally the series begins to mature and develop.

Sunny's a fun character. Like Spenser, she was a cop but had trouble with authority. Like Spenser, she has a cute dog and lots of witticisms for clients and bad guys. Now, unlike Spenser, we see that she isn't always quite as self-confident as he is. This is interesting, and we'll see where Parker goes with it.

In the book's main plot, Sunny gets hired by a young woman who wants to find out who her parents really are. She has a couple who claim to be her birth parents, but doesn't believe them. When she asks them for DNA samples (which would prove her heritage) they both balk. She then hires Sunny, and when Sunny begins asking questions things get violent. Sunny, of course, is able to handle herself, and the result is that she works out some of what's going on.

I enjoyed this book. Parker's always got a sense of humor, and some of the secondary characters are wonderful. One of them, her gay friend Spike (Sunny's version of Hawk), calls himself "the world's toughest queer" and makes believers out of some of the bad guys. The whole thing, while being suspenseful, is very very fun too.

For Spenser and Parker fans, this latest effort is a bit dissapointing.

The plot seems to drag, none of the characters are a bit likeable, and there are some scenes where you can't help but picture Spenser in a skirt (Ugh).

Parker's writing is a bit too formulaic for him to make the jump from a tough-guy detective novel to a tough-woman detective novel....the characters are too similar.

Robert B. Parker was as great of a author as any of the greats! Love all of his books. This is of a female P.I. She is strong and yet soft.

You've gotta love Robert Parker, creator of Spenser, Jesse Stone and Sunny Randall. All of his characters are tough, gritty and flawed--and sometimes wind up on TV.

Sunny Randall hasn't made it to the small screen yet, but give her time. Her bull terrier, Rosie, is enough of a character to have her own show.

In *Melancholy Baby*, college coed Sarah hires P.I. Sunny Randall to discover who her real parents are. Chock full of enough attitude to make even a mild-mannered reader want to slap her, Sarah has no evidence the folks who say they're her parents aren't really her parents. Just a feeling. Just some off-handed remarks made over her lifetime. The kid's got a good supply money of her own to pay, so Sunny takes the case. And with patience not even money could buy, Sunny gleans enough information from the brat (I couldn't see her any other way) to start her investigation--which leads to famous figures, deeply-hidden secrets, and murder.

The more Parker reveals that Sarah has a reason to suspect her parentage, the more Sarah becomes a sympathetic character. That's a wonderful twist of the pen. I went from wanting to teach her some manners to longing to shelter her from the bad guys.

Parker's books are fast, and I'm not just talking about the action. He chooses easy words. His chapters are short. He uses lots of dialogue with short sentences, leaving penty of white space on the page. All that adds up to a quick read because it's so easy to say, "I'll read the next chapter, then quit" at the end of every chapter. After all, the next is only three pages.

Robert B. Parker's "Melancholy Baby" is a great read, although I did guess the ending about halfway through. Still, the chapters are short, the paragraphs are well-written and my attention was easily kept.

This was my first Robert B. Parker book, and I'm already happily onto the next.

J.R. Reardon
author, "Confidential Communications"

I've read all four books in the Sunny Randall series so far. My general feeling is that Sunny's psychology is far more interesting than the mysteries in these books.

In this book, we have sort of a flashback to the first book in the series, "Family Honor," where Sunny takes in one of the characters in her investigation to protect her. In this case, it's 20-year old Sarah who is convinced she's not her parents' biological child despite her parents' assertions to the contrary. Using some of her trust fund money, she hires Sunny to investigate and it isn't long before Sarah's life is threatened along with Sunny's. As we've come to expect, Sunny will draw on her ex-husband's organized crime family to help her out in a tough spot or two...and her pal Spike. And she'll gush over her dog Rosie at least once every page or two.

The mystery in this book gets solved, but not real tidily. We're left with some dangling threads regarding Sarah, Sarah's real mother, Sarah's adoptive mother, and few other characters. The most enjoyable part of the book wasn't really the mystery (that part was actually a bit lame), but rather Sunny finally starting to come to grips with why she can't live with ex-husband Richey or without him. Her shrink, Dr. Susan Silverman, manages to sound like every cliche we've ever heard: "How did that make you feel?" "Let's talk about that." "What do *you* think it means?" Her practice seems to consist entirely of asking 5 or 6 questions comprised of less than 10 words in every 55-minute session, and then listening to Sunny do her own psychological assessments based on those handful of questions.

Out of the four Sunny Randall books so far, I'd rank them as follows:

1) Family Honor

2) Shrink Wrap

3) Melancholy Baby

4) Perish Twice

In other words, we're learning more about Sunny, but the books themselves aren't necessarily getting better.

Great read !! Enjoy the Sunny Randall character !!

Love all of Robert Parker's Sunny Randal stories, also good are Spencer and Jesse Stone collection.

As described. Came on time. Happy

Great shape.