I haven't read the book as yet - but it is wonderful being able to order used books from Amazon and know that I am going to get something in good condition. I have never been dissatisfied.

Being a huge Spenser fan I am of course a Robert B. Parker fan. Sunny Randall makes her debut in this yarn of sex, deceit and extortion. Not his best but getting his feet wet with this new female perspective, he makes more than a solid effort. (he gets the ball rolling in following tales) I'm grateful to Mr. Parker and his pen (figuratively???) If you are a fan...don't miss it. If you're not...WHY not???!!!!

FAMILY HONOR lived up to its title as the pilot for this delightful series which felt at first like Spenser was toning himself into a female roar heard round the literary arena, while extending his slant on gangster Vs cop family backgrounds (in which neither is all bad or all good) in this Juliet and Romeo romance.

I hadn't thought I'd be able to get into a female private eye series by Parker, especially after having become addicted to his 34 Spenser novels. But FAMILY HONOR was a perfect appetizer with appealing percolation. I don't doubt that Parker can carry both his new series (see my review of NIGHT PASSAGE, Jesse Stone # 1).

It didn't take more than a few chapters for Sunny to split off from the long-wrought, well-writ Spenser mystique and into her own, as a full character... maybe with Spenser speaking into her ear as an angel from an alternate reality, for a while. I enjoyed the slips connecting to Spenser, i.e., how Sunny might deal with a particular hairy situation if she were a 200 pound, male boxer. In humorous yet realistic contrast to Spenser and Hawk types, Parker dramatized what a small female can do to compensate for not being a testy, taut, towering gorilla-with-gonads, in a plot which will had me smiling. I'm excited about this series; I enjoyed the upbeat feeling of this first offering in it. I relished hearing Randall use Spenser's trademark words in dialogue, like "some more" and "eek."

Reading the first few chapters of FAMILY HONOR I kept seeing Spenser in high heels, noting how uncomfortable they were, and wondering where/how to effectively house a big enough gun on a 115 lb, 5'4" body... as he seemed to be having great fun adapting to this recent female incarnation, shaking out the form and personality. Of course, that image alone got me grinning. By the time the intense ending called up, I was liking Sunny Randall every bit as much as Kinsey Millhone (Sue Grafton's P. I.).

For this unique pilot, Parker designed a stylish, italicized prologue in third person observation of Sunny and Rosie, accomplishing an artistic, literary feel, giving a light-touch, sensitive contrast to chapter one opening into a first person narrative style with Sunny telling her own story in the classic private eye genre mode.

The included cultural icons of cooking, dress, habits, and thinking were precisely on target with the copyright date of 1999, when the Great Chefs TV episodes were running hot and heavy, with their long-handled saute pans being shook (contents were no longer stirred on TV) above gas-lit burners on commercial grade stoves, featuring Spike, Sunny's gay, tough-guy chef friend.

The plot here gave hints of EARLY AUTUMN (# 7 Spenser) and CEREMONY (# 9 Spenser) as Sunny took in a young teen, Millicent Patton, runaway, hooking daughter of her clients. Enlightening entertainment was easily obtained through Sunny's ways of dealing with and drawing out this young human lost in the sump and shrug of a lack of love.

A few quirky questions came to mind as I began reading this novel:

What might Rachel Wallace (# 6 SPENSER, Looking for Rachel Wallace) say about Spenser's (Parker's) ability to understand being female, if she were to read FAMILY HONOR. And what would she think about macho if she had read all 34 Spenser novels. Can novels help us understand that which we would have to stretch outside our bodies and into another form to get? I'd say they can, especially if penned by Parker.

Rachel Wallace may have to give the gauntlet on this one. Spenser understands.

Yet... can testosterone ever fully comprehend powerlessness...

Maybe any person who has ever been depressed, grieved loss of a loved one, or desperately wanted something he couldn't have, for whatever reason, has the capacity to comprehend the initial feeling of hopelessness which sometimes comes at those times of leached strength and slow coming answers. We each have a spirit, though, which seems to believe that morning comes daily. Parker has made a good case that sunny weather can dog the footsteps of storms.

Linda Shelnutt

This is the first book I have read by Robert B. Parker so I cannot compare his newly minted heroine, Sunny Randall, to his previous protagonists or previous books.

Sonja "Sunny" Randall is a 35-year-old chip off the old block. Like her father, she was a cop, but then left to become a private detective. She's tough and beautiful, but frankly there is little about her disposition that seems to evoke her nickname. She's actually a rather abrupt individual who is a little too much of a smart alec to be truly endearing. Her wit is clever, but often a bit abrasive and she prefers witty one liners to deep thought. After a while, the one-liners become tiresome and seem to be mostly a way for Sunny to cover up her own issues with a fiesty shell. She's a loner - in fact, it's what led her to leave the police department for private practice, and it's a large part of what led her to divorce her husband of 9 years, Richie, with whom she remains good friends. Her constant companion is Rosie, a miniature bull terrier who Sunny seems to like much better than most people, particularly children.

The plot of this book centers around Millicent Patton, the 15-year-old daughter of a wealthy Boston banker and his socialite wife. When Millie runs away from home, Sunny is hired by Millie's parents to find her and bring her back home. It isn't long before Sunny catches up with Mille, but when she finds out what drove Millie out of the house in the first place, she has a decision to make: should she return Millie to her parents or not? The plot weaves the lives of Millie, Millie's parents, and Sunny directly into the middle of Boston's organized crime, and what starts out as finding a runaway teen ends up being an elusive contest to keep them both from getting killed.

I still haven't decided if I really like Sunny Randall. She's just a little too fearless and flippant for my tastes. Also, Parker's writing style is rather terse. He seems to prefer language that spurts rather than flows, with prose that is often truncated. In fact, I don't think I've ever read a novel in which so many sentences had less than 10 words in them. It's OK for periodic busts of dialog, but as a steady diet in narrative and dialog, it isn't really my cup of tea. I often found myself feeling as though two or three sentences should have been joined by commas or some other punctuation besides periods.

There isn't generally a whole lot of suspense here, as Parker reveals the answers slowly throughout the book rather than taking us breathlessly to the final few pages for the climax and resolution.

Although it's nice to have discovered a new author in this genre, I'm not sure I can count him among my favorites. I will say this: he certainly beats James Patterson, but that isn't saying a whole lot these days with Patterson churning out mediocre books like a drive through window.

If I were to award a letter grade, I'd give this book a B-. I'd also recommend starting with this book since it is the first in the Sunny Randall series, and the other books sort of build chronologically with many of the same characters appearing over and over again, such as Sunny's friend Spike, her ex-husband Ritchie, her sister Elizabeth, and her friend Julie, not to mention several repeat appearances by member's of Boston's underworld. If you like this book, continue on in the Sunny Randall series. If not, you'll probably want to pick something else since I'm now on my 3rd Sunny Randall book and have found the style of each to be essentially the same.

If you thought Parker was good, you don't know how good he is until you read this one. The confrontation in the restaurant is the best scene I have read in a mystery. Hold your breath!