Let's get this settled right away: Sunny Randall is nothing like Spenser. True, she's a private eye in Boston with good connections to the cops, and she also knows a lot of bad guys. And yes, she happens to have a trusty sidekick named Spike, and a close friend who could easily be related to Susan Silverman, (Spenser's long-term companion). Oh, did I mention the cute dog? Aside from that, though, there's absolutely no similarity between this new series from Robert B. Parker and his long-running Spenser books. Just because the case Sunny is working on--finding a missing 15-year-old girl who has run away from her very rich parents--sounds similar to the Spenser favorite Thin Air doesn't mean Parker is repeating himself here. Think of it as more like a homage, the kind of thing the author took on when he agreed to finish Raymond Chandler's Poodle Springs. Only in this case it's a homage to himself--but what the hell. Written specifically with Parker's good friend actress Helen Hunt in mind, Family Honor is all in good fun. At one point, a no-nonsense nun looks down at Sunny's bull terrier, who is lying on her back begging for a tummy rub. "What's wrong with this dog?" Sister said. "It is a dog, isn't it?"
Parker is so good that with one hand tied behind his back he can create characters that are more memorable than most writers can even when pounding away with both fists. In just a few short pages, he tells us all about Sunny's career as a painter--and about the complicated relationship between her cool policeman father and her irritating pseudo-feminist mother. Parker even makes a direct dig at Spenser (who, before turning to private investigating, had a short and fairly unsuccessful career in the boxing world). When the runaway girl questions Sunny's ability to protect her from dangerous criminals--"you're a girl like me, for crissake, what are you going to do?"--Sunny replies, "It would be nice if I weighed two hundred pounds and used to be a boxer. But I'm not, so we find other ways." Exactly. --Dick Adler
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. From School Library Journal
-Sunny Randall, Parker's new detective, bears little resemblance to Spenser, his more famous creation. She is petite, attractive, educated, and artistic, whereas he is burly, gruff, and blunt. They do, however, share a penchant for zinging one-liners and shrewd leaps of deduction. Sunny, the ex-wife of the noninvolved son and nephew of the remnants of the Boston Mafia, wants to strike out on her own. The fact that she still loves Richie and hesitates to form new alliances somewhat cramps her style, but does aid her detecting. With an endearing bull terrier named Rosie; a gourmet cook, body-builder sidekick who happens to be gay; and a girlfriend who is a psychiatric social worker, Sunny has as many compatriots as Spenser, and puts them to equally good use. She is hired by wealthy politician Brock Patton to find his runaway daughter. This task is quickly accomplished with the help of Richie's family; what is not so easily discovered is why someone tries to kill Millicent-and Sunny-or why the girl's parents are so reticent and Millicent so fearful. While not much of a mystery, this is an engrossing, quick read and Millicent is a quirky, captivating adolescent. Parker has come up with another winning team.
Susan H. Woodcock, Chantilly Regional Library, VA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
After 33 novelsAincluding more than two dozen Spenser mysteriesAbackboned by heros concerned with distinctly male codes of behavior, Parker presents his first female protagonist. She's Sunny Randall, and she's a keeper. In some ways, Sunny is a female Spenser. Like him, she's a former cop, now a Boston PI, quick with a pistol and a quip. She teams with an odd sidekick, Spike, as Spenser teams with Hawk, and she has a significant other, an ex-husband to Spenser's Susan. But Sunny is female, and as she explains in this wonderfully involving and moving novel, that means that she can't rely on the compass of "Be a man" to orient toward life. How to live correctly is this novel's theme, as it is in the best Spenser novels, and to explore that theme Parker borrows situations from those novels. Sunny is hired by a powerful family to find their runaway daughter, Millicent, who, it transpires, is hooking and needs rescuingAlike the girl in Taming a Sea-Horse. Once saved from the streets, Sunny trains Millicent in responsible adult waysAcooking, exerciseAas Spenser trained Paul in Early Autumn. But it's only a minor knock that Parker uses here elements honed in 30 years of writing, for he uses them with consummate skill. Millicent, it happens, witnessed a conspiracy to murder arising from her cold, ambitious parentsAher father aims to be governorAand the Italian mobsters who control them. The mobsters now want her dead, and Sunny, too, if need be. Sunny's fight to save Millicent and herself moves through a wide swath of Boston and its denizens, all etched in Parker's lean and exquisitely cadenced prose. The high suspense is equaled by the emotional power of Sunny's bonding with the damaged girl. A bravura performance, this novel launches what promises to be a series for the ages. BOMC main selection; film rights to Helen Hunt. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
About the Author
Robert B. Parker was the author of more than fifty books. He died in January 2010. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
What if Spenser were a woman? What if he were still by turns macho and sensitive, well-connected in both Boston's law community (because he was an ex-cop) and in Boston's underworld (because the ex-husband she'd walked out on were a mob scion who ran some legitimate saloons started with dirty money), great with weapons and wisecracks, but deep-down sententious and, yes, wise as ever? Chances are he'd be just as potent a fantasy as a woman, but more convincing than when he was a manand chances are he'd walk and talk just like Sunny Randall, the painter/private eye politically connected banker Brock Patton and his well-groomed wife Betty call when their daughter Millicent, 15, runs away from home. Finding a runaway who must be turning tricks on Boston's streets to survive is no problem, Sunny soon realizes; the problem is figuring out what to do with a runaway who doesn't want to go home, identifying the people she's afraid of, and protecting her from them when every promising lead she gets about how to keep them away from Sunny turns up dead. Fans of Spenser (Hush Money, p. 108, etc.) will be happy to know that Sunny, who doesn't mind fighting back hard, takes her grievances all the way to the top en route to revelations that make her feel ``as if I'd spent my life in a convent and was just emerging.'' Come to think of it, Sunny's also just like Helen Hunt, who'll be playing her in the movie scheduled for shooting next year. Nice, huh? (Film rights to Helen Hunt, Book-of-the-Month Club main selection; author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Private investigator Sunny Randall has a full array of family and friends who help her in her new business. Her complex life becomes even more so when she locates the runaway teenager whom she has been hired to find, only to decide that the young girl's home is not a healthy place; so Sunny keeps her while she investigates her clients. Her inquiries reveal some seemingly unrelated murders, and soon she finds herself killing a man to protect young Millicent. Andrea Thompson is easy to listen to; her husky voice is believably one of a self-described "cute" thirty-something blond who can get tough when necessary. Men, too, are portrayed with panache, whether it be a pimp or Sunny's attractive and devoted ex-husband. Most listeners will be drawn into the story immediately. Recommended for popular collections.
-Juleigh Muirhead Clark, John D. Rockefeller Jr. Lib., Williamsburg, VA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the misc_supplies edition. 
![Family Honor (Sunny Randall Book 1) by [Robert B. Parker]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51xBY37aaKL._SY346_.jpg)
