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Melancholy Baby (Sunny Randall Novel)
 
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Melancholy Baby (Sunny Randall Novel) (Paperback)

by Robert B. Parker (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
RRP: £6.99
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Product details

  • Paperback: 320 pages
  • Publisher: No Exit Press (1 Sep 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1842431404
  • ISBN-13: 978-1842431405
  • Product Dimensions: 17.2 x 11 x 2.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 398,324 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #75 in  Books > Crime, Thrillers & Mystery > Authors, A-Z > P > Parker, Robert B.

Product Description

Amazon.com

Some of Robert B. Parker's most distinctive novels over the years (God Save the Child, Early Autumn, Ceremony, etc.) have centered on young people in trouble, so his return to that theme in Melancholy Baby is hardly a surprise. What's more remarkable is how deftly he uses the case of an angry, confused college student searching for the facts about her family background as a means to pry open the hardly less troubled psyche of Boston private eye Sonya "Sunny" Randall, a character at serious risk of one day outshining Parker's better-known but less reflective gumshoe, Spenser.

Twenty-one-year-old trust-fund kid Sarah Markham suspects that her parents aren't really related to her at all. "They can't find my birth certificate," she tells Sunny in amazement. "They don’t remember which hospital I was born in." This isn't the sort of inquiry Sunny likes to take on, especially not now, when her ex-husband of five years, Richie Burke--whom she still hasn't given up loving--is marrying another woman. However, Sunny needs a distraction from self-pity, and she can see that "everything about Sarah and her parents seemed fraudulent ... like something that had been built on the cheap, with shoddy materials and no craft, to conceal something unhealthy and mean." As she tears at this façade, though, traveling to Illinois and New York City in order to expose secrets not only in Sarah's father's past but in the history of a holier-than-thou radio celeb, Sunny discovers that her client isn't the only person being kept in the dark. But is it worth destroying Sarah's sense of herself--not to mention attracting the malicious notice of well-armed thugs--to set the record straight? And can Sunny even accomplish this, while struggling (with help from Spenser's psychiatrist girlfriend, Susan Silverman) to understand why she's 37 years old and "just can’t be married"?

Any halfway-conscious reader will spot the solution to this story's mystery from miles off, and Parker's use of central-casting figures--the hypocritical moralizer, the oleaginous but natty shyster--should earn him free admission to a "How to Create Credible Characters" seminar. Still, it's hard not to be charmed by a novel that's as willing as Melancholy Baby is to knock the pins out from under its protagonist, and see where the angst falls. At Dr. Silverman's rates, Sunny had better figure her life out soon. --J. Kingston Pierce --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.



Review

'No one can rival Parker at his best, and this is pretty near as good as it gets.' -- Yorkshire Post Praise for Family Honor: 'Lean and fast' -- The Guardian 'I fell in love with his books' -- Helen Hunt 'Parker packs more meaning into a whispered "yeah" than most writers can pack into a page.' -- The Sunday Times 'Compact, percussive storytelling by a writer who knows his job and does it to the letter' -- Literary Review 'The writing and characters are a delight.' -- Sunday Times 'Sleek, ingenious, well-muscled entertainment.' -- Literary Review --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Melancholy Baby (Sunny Randall Novel)
52% buy the item featured on this page:
Melancholy Baby (Sunny Randall Novel) 4.2 out of 5 stars (4)
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Customer Reviews

4 Reviews
5 star:
 (1)
4 star:
 (3)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Humor and Ironies Abound in a Novel about Identity, 1 Mar 2005
By Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)      
This review is from: Melancholy Baby (Hardcover)
Who are you? How do you know who you are?

Robert B. Parker takes a fresh look at both questions in this wry and ironical novel.

PI Sunny Randall finds the ground swept out from under her feet when her ex-husband, Richie, announces he will remarry. Sunny cannot live with or without Richie, and she finds herself needing to find out what her true motivations are. Why cannot she be married to the man she loves?

At the same time, Sunny takes on a new client, Sarah Markham, a troubled young woman who wants to know who her birth parents are. Sunny doesn't much like the client, but sympathizes with her troubled self-image while being something of a role model to Sarah.

Sunny soon decides that there's something wrong in the Markham family. Neither parent will submit to DNA testing, and their reasons don't make much sense. The "parents" are vague about everything else. What are they hiding? Matters quickly become more dangerous when Sarah and her boyfriend are roughed up, and the same goons come looking for Sunny. But did they count on Spike?

While the case proceeds, Sunny starts twice-a-week therapy sessions with a new therapist, Dr. Susan Silverman, who will fascinate you in her cool professional role.

The mystery in this book isn't really much of a mystery. It's more of an investigative procedural.

The developing identity story is a fascinating one, and the book is riveting when Mr. Parker turns his attention into that arena.

The book's major flaw is that Mr. Parker cannot quite take himself seriously. He puts little jokes into the book that distract from the story and take you away from being inside story with the characters. A good example is having Sunny endlessly fantasizing about what kind of a Harvard professor Susan hangs out with. Really!

As usual, the dialogue sparkles like perfectly polished diamonds do on a sunny day. The therapy session dialogues are quite remarkable.

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Sunny sees Susan the shrink and still saves Sarah, 8 Jul 2005
By Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)      
This review is from: Melancholy Baby (Hardcover)
Rolling around in my head is the notion of what a Tom Clancy novel would be like if Robert B. Parker wrote it, because reading this latest Sunny Randall novel reminded me that Parker is the most economical story teller that I read on a regular basis. This is a quote from "The Washington Post Book World" on the front flap that says "Parker can reveal more about a character in five words of dialogue than many writers can in an entire book." "Melancholy Baby" is 296-pages long and has 64 chapters, and since the lines are spaced 1-1/2 lines it is easy reading on the eyes as well.

This fourth Sunny Randall novel begins with our heroine in a very bad move because Ritchie, her ex-husband, is getting married to a woman that Sunny wants to kill and getting a much pleasure out of the idea before she finally has to let go of it. Sunny knows that she does not want to be married and apparently while she can live with Rosie, her bull terrier, she cannot live with anybody else but her dog. Two things end up helping Sunny get out of her funk. First, she gets a new client, Sarah Markham, a college student who has become convinced that her parents are not her biological parents. Her parents insist they are really her parents, but refuse to take DNA tests to prove it. Sarah is living off a trust fund so she has the cash to push the effort. Anybody who has read one of Parker's novels knows that the modus operandi is for Sunny to go around and ask questions to see what shakes loose, because something always does sooner or later and there are usually dead bodies involved.

The other thing that helps Sunny get her head straight is going to see a shrink, and not just any shrink but Susan Silverman (who else?). Part of the humor of their sessions is to see Spenser's lady love through the eyes of a different character (and a female one as well). The other part is that Susan does unto Sunny as Sunny does to the people she questions throughout the novel. The big difference is that Susan elicits Sunny's self-analysis more through a series of pupil dilations and slight head movements than actual verbal sentences. One of the nice things about this novel is that Sunny makes as much progress in the sessions with Susan as she does out on the streets with Sarah's case. Figuring out whodunit in this one is not that hard, but proving it and, more importantly, doing something about it is what is more important in a Parker novel.

Long time readers of those novels will recognize the return to one of Parker's stronger themes, that of helping a child to grow up (which goes all the way back to "God Save the Child"). The difference when the mentor is Sunny instead of Spenser is that she is still trying to get a handle on being an adult, but she certainly uses that to her advantage in dealing with Sarah. What will be familiar to readers is the key to such persuasion, which is giving the kid the information and letting them make an informed choice without being judgmental. It would be interesting to see what one of Parker's characters would do raising a kid from the start instead of having to intervene during the tumultuous teenage years, but I do not see that really being a future Parker novel.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Humor and Ironies Abound in a Novel about Identity, 2 Mar 2005
By Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)      
This review is from: Melancholy Baby (Hardcover)
Who are you? How do you know who you are?

Robert B. Parker takes a fresh look at both questions in this wry and ironical novel.

PI Sunny Randall finds the ground swept out from under her feet when her ex-husband, Richie, announces he will remarry. Sunny cannot live with or without Richie, and she finds herself needing to find out what her true motivations are. Why cannot she be married to the man she loves?

At the same time, Sunny takes on a new client, Sarah Markham, a troubled young woman who wants to know who her birth parents are. Sunny doesn't much like the client, but sympathizes with her troubled self-image while being something of a role model to Sarah.

Sunny soon decides that there's something wrong in the Markham family. Neither parent will submit to DNA testing, and their reasons don't make much sense. The "parents" are vague about everything else. What are they hiding? Matters quickly become more dangerous when Sarah and her boyfriend are roughed up, and the same goons come looking for Sunny. But did they count on Spike?

While the case proceeds, Sunny starts twice-a-week therapy sessions with a new therapist, Dr. Susan Silverman, who will fascinate you in her cool professional role.

The mystery in this book isn't really much of a mystery. It's more of an investigative procedural.

The developing identity story is a fascinating one, and the book is riveting when Mr. Parker turns his attention into that arena.

The book's major flaw is that Mr. Parker cannot quite take himself seriously. He puts little jokes into the book that distract from the story and take you away from being inside story with the characters. A good example is having Sunny endlessly fantasizing about what kind of a Harvard professor Susan hangs out with. Really!

As usual, the dialogue sparkles like perfectly polished diamonds do on a sunny day. The therapy session dialogues are quite remarkable.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Snap. crackle ............................
I discovered Robert B Parker about a year ago, with a TV movie starring Tom Sellick. Like what I saw, looked out for the books, and have been hooked ever since. Read more
Published 16 days ago by Mr. E. P. Wilson

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