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Summary
Summary
Boston P.I. Sunny Randall joins forces with the most important man in her life--her father--to crack a 30-year-old case. In a compelling game of cat-and-mouse, Sunny uses all her skills to draw out her prey, realizing too late that she's setting herself up to become the next victim.
Author Notes
Robert Brown Parker was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, on September 17, 1932. He received a B.A. from Colby College in 1954, served in the U.S. Army in Korea, and then returned to receive a M. A. in English literature from Boston University in 1957. He received a Ph.D. in English literature from Boston University in 1971.
Before becoming a full-time writer in 1979, he taught at Lowell State College, Bridgewater State College and Northwestern University.
In 1971, Parker published The Godwuff Manuscript, as homage to Raymond Chandler. The character he created, Spencer, became his own detective and was featured in more than 30 novels. His Spencer character has been featured in six TV movies and the television series Spencer: For Hire that starred Robert Urich and ran from 1985 to 1988.
He is also the author of the Jesse Stone series, which has been made into a series of television movies for CBS, and the Sunny Randall series. His novel Appaloosa (2005) was made into a 2008 movie directed by and starring Ed Harris. He has received numerous awards for his work including an Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1977 for The Promised Land, Grand Master Edgar Award for his collective oeuvre in 2002, and the Gumshoe Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. He died of a heart attack on January 18, 2010 at the age of 77.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
At the start of Parker's engaging sixth Sunny Randall novel (after Blue Screen), the cop-turned-PI helps her father track down a Boston serial killer whose depredations begin again after a 20-year hiatus. The "spare change" killer executes victims with a single shot to the head, leaving three coins near the body. Sunny's dad, Phil, headed the old task force formed to catch the killer, who wrote Phil taunting letters as the killings piled up. A new killing and a fresh letter to Phil have him and Sunny serving as consultant and assistant respectively to a new task force. Gutsy Sunny takes the lead in identifying the most likely suspect, and then in playing him dangerously to get hard evidence. Parker's signature bantering byplay and some borrowings of characters from other series (notably Susan Silverman from the Spenser novels) will delight fans. The outcome is never in doubt, but Parker hits most of the right notes, and there's still ingenuity to his cat-and-mouse. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
The victims, dispatched with a single shot to the back of the head, are not assaulted or molested in any way and share no defining characteristics. Their bodies are decorated with a few coins. Most troubling to the Boston PD is the time elapsed between the two most recent victims: 20 years. The city was terrorized by the Spare Change killer two decades ago, and Phil Randall headed the task force that came up dry. Now he's been asked to come out of retirement to consult on the new killings. He asks his daughter, private investigator and former cop Sunny Randall, to join him. A suspect emerges, but there is no physical evidence to tie him to the killings, only Sunny's intuition. Meanwhile, Sunny's relationship with her ex-husband--for whom she still carries a torch--is moving to a new plateau as she tries to understand the family dynamics among her father, mother, sister and herself. Parker, also responsible for the classic Spenser mystery series and the Jesse Stone novels, continues to add depth to his characterization of Randall as he explores her often contradictory feelings about love. Parker's ruminations on romance are sometimes--not always--wearisome, but he never fails to entertain with humor and recurring characters whom we welcome back into our lives like old friends. --Wes Lukowsky Copyright 2007 Booklist
Guardian Review
Robert B Parker used to write great thrillers, most involving his super-tough private eye, Spenser. He was not only tough but literate, had a terrific line in wisecracks, and could also whip up a first-class dinner. Now Parker's books are lightweight, overly mannered and tease annoyingly because they give occasional glimpses of his earlier power. One of his new characters is a former cop turned private eye, Sunny Randal, who in this book is on the trail of the Spare Change Killer, so called because he leaves a few coins at the scene of each crime. The plot is fairly intriguing, but we really could do without hundreds of pages of psychobabble about Sunny's dog, her ex-husband, her therapy, her family and her ditzy friend. What's left after all that is just too thin to be satisfying. Caption: article-septthrills.3 Robert B Parker used to write great thrillers, most involving his super-tough private eye, Spenser. He was not only tough but literate, had a terrific line in wisecracks, and could also whip up a first-class dinner. - Matthew Lewin.
Kirkus Review
Sunny Randall joins her father, pulled out of retirement, and every cop in Boston to catch a serial killer who's skipped a generation. Twenty years ago the Spare Change Killer terrorized the city. He shot seven victims, leaving three coins near each body, before stopping as suddenly and mysteriously as he'd begun. Now Spare Change, or somebody who's copying both his m.o. and the style of the obligatory taunting notes he sent Phil Randall, is back in business. Frustrated because the task force he headed never cleared the earlier murders, Phil is eager to consult on the current spate, especially when his beloved shamus daughter agrees to help. It isn't long before Sunny identifies a suspect who, after a single "welcome aboard" note to her, tries a more direct approach: a series of meetings at which he drinks with her and uses his noncommittal obsession with the case to flirt. Still bruised from her fling with Paradise Police Chief Jesse Stone (Blue Screen, 2006), Sunny would be in no mood for romance even if her suitor weren't a probable serial killer. So the case, starved for mystery, devolves into a cat-and-mouse game with a perp whose florid behavior is notably in excess of any explanation his climactic confession offers for it. What's left is what's always left even in Parker's worst: the knowing, laconic dialogue, the endless posturing, the nuggets of hard-won wisdom you never could've come up with yourself. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
(See Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/07) (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
