Robert B. Parker, Melancholy Baby

Melancholy Baby

Robert B. Parker

Putnam, August 2004, $24.95, 304 pp.

ISBN 0399152180

Boston private detective Sunny Randall goes into an emotional tailspin when her ex-husband Richie tells her that he is getting remarried. Even though she divorced him she never stopped loving him. She just couldn't be married or love anyone else except her bullterrier Rosie. Unable to cope with the pain of Richie's remarriage, Sunny visits psychiatrist Dr. Susan Silverman. Although she doesn't know it, Susan is the girlfriend of the famous Spencer.

Needing something to occupy herself, Sunny takes on the case of Sarah Markham, a twenty year old college student, who wants her to find out who her real parents are. When Sunny talks to the Markhams, they insist that they are Sarah's real parents; Sunny catches the husband in a lie about where he worked when Sarah was conceived. Two thugs beat up Sarah, telling her to drop the investigation or else. The same musclemen come after Sunny who meets them with her gun and some backup. The information she gets from these two goons leads her to the people who hired them. By the time the case is finished, two men are dead, one person is going to prison, Sarah learns who her biological mother is and Sunny is beginning to understand her fears of marriage.

Robert B. Parker's Sunny Randall series is not a female version of Spenser. She is a troubled woman who seeks help to regain her mental health as s she shows her emotions more than Spenser does and her methods of investigation are quite different as is her circle of friends. MELANCHOLY BABY is one of the author's best works with its stark prose, eccentric cast and a climax it is impossible not to love.

Harriet Klausner