29 November 2022.
ISBN : 978-0-85730530-5 (PB)
Boston private eye Sunny Randall and her dog Rosie, live in a four-story town house on River Street Place. Rented for peanuts, because back in the day Sunny rescued the owner, Melanie Joan Hall, from a creepy, manipulating ex-husband.
Melanie Joan, queen of the bodice rippers, went off on a book tour and ended up in Hollywood. Now on another jaunt she pitches up in town with another problem and asks Sunny to help. She has been accused of stealing the material for her latest blockbuster. Blackmail has morphed into threats on her life. Sunny steps up to the plate.
This is the opening of Mike Lupica’s latest thriller “Robert B Parker’s Revenge Tour”.
Parker stormed into the US literary crime scene in the early 1970s with a series of books featuring private eye Spenser - “spelled with an ‘s’ like the poet”. One of the greats of the American hard-boiled genre, he wrote flowing, skilled, graceful, stripped-to-the-bone prose. He died in 2010 leaving a legacy of forty Spenser novels, two TV series of “Spenser for Hire”, and half a dozen TV movies. Alongside nine books featuring Jesse Stone, an LA detective who moves to the small New England town of Paradise to take the job as Police Chief - played in the following TV series by the masterful Tom Selleck. And another six novels, led by Sunny Randall, who also appears in three Jesse Stone stories.
Revenge Tour hits close to home in ways Sunny does not expect. While searching for the truth about Melanie Joan’s past, she learns more than she bargained for. Her loyalty to her friend is challenged, her own life is threatened. Meanwhile, her aging father, a retired cop, is in trouble. An uber-expensive lawyer with a host of criminal connections had decided to settle an old score.
One case bleeds into the other. Sunny’s best friend Spike takes on the job of watching all that Melanie Joan does. Sunny calls in a posse of Parker’s extended family of sleuths and scene stealers, including Spenser’s partner Susan, and his main man Hawk, to help out.
Revenge Tour isn’t a perfect re-boot of Parker’s character, but the story is lean, tough and engrossing. Driven by Sunny directly and at pace, it retains the emotional but unsentimental quality of Parker’s writing. And it does tap into his style, his love of Boston and his assessment of the world around him - the building blocks of all his output.
Down the years I
have read most of Robert B Parker’s writing.
It’s so good to see it still alive and kicking, along with all the
characters in his Boston repertory company. And like the work of Ace Atkins and
Michael Brandman on the Spenser and Jesse Stone series, Mike Lupica’s Sunny
Randall is a credit to the master’s original stories.
------
Reviewer: Jeff
Dowson.
Mike Lupica is one of the most prominent sports writers in America. His longevity at the top of his field is based on his experience and insider's knowledge, coupled with a provocative presentation that takes an uncompromising look at the tumultuous world of professional sports. Today he is a syndicated columnist for the New York Daily News, which includes his popular "Shooting from the Lip" column, which appears every Sunday.
Jeff
Dowson began
his career working in the theatre as an actor and a director. He moved into
television as a
writer/producer/director. Screen credits include arts series, entertainment
features, documentaries, drama series and TV films. Turning crime novelist
in 2014, he introduced Bristol private eye Jack Shepherd in Closing the Distance. The series
developed with Changing the Odds, Cloning the Hate and Bending the Rules. The Ed Grover series,
featuring an American GI in Bristol during the years following World War 2, opened
with One Fight At A Time. The second
book New Friends Old Enemies was published in May 2021. Jeff is a member
of BAFTA, Mystery People and the Crime Writers Association.
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