Sunny Randall, the Boston PI who's waited years longer for resurrection than Parker's franchise heroes Spenser and Jesse Stone, is back in action thanks to sportswriter/YA specialist Lupica (No Slam Dunk, 2018, etc.).About the only thing that prevents Sunny from retying the knot with her ex-husband, saloonkeeper and Mafia scion Richie Burke, is her inability to committhat and his getting shot in the back. He's not dead, and there are those who think that sparing his life was deliberate, but a muttered remark by his shooter, "sins of the father," makes him seriously spooked about his father, Desmond Burke, who's rumored to be on the brink of a major move into the city's illegal gun trade. Not to worry: The next victim is Desmond's brother Peter, whose days of high-volume bookmaking are ended when he's shot to death in the park around the Chestnut Hill Reservoir. It's clear that somebody has a serious grudge against the Burke family, clear that Desmond and Felix, his surviving brother, would prefer to take care of the matter themselves, and clear that Sunny's going to horn in anyway, arousing the ire of both the Burkes and Albert Antonioni, the mobster who, retired to Rhode Island after trying to kill Sunny, still seems to keep popping up wherever Sunny looks in this case. Antonioni soldier Joseph Marchetti beats up Sunny, and someone kills the top soldiers in both the Burke and the Antonioni camps and shoots up Felix's house for good measure. No wonder Sunny (Spare Change, 2008, etc.) feels "as if most of the people I need to talk might be dead or in jail."Apart from constructing a serviceable plot, Lupica mimics the heroine's voice, much less distinctive than those of Parker's other leads, with ease. If all hands sling around a fair amount of gratuitous attitude, well, that's just like Parker too. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

*Starred Review* Boston private investigator Sunny Randall and the love of her live, Richie Burke, used to be married. Now they are a couple again sorta. They are exclusive, but maintain separate lives. When Richie, a nonparticipating heir to an Irish crime family in Boston, is shot in the back (but lives), Sunny responds in her typically fearless fashion: find out who and why, and do something about it. Sunny's first angle is that the shooting is related to the family business; she knows that Richie's father, Desmond Burke, outlasted even the legendary Boston crime figure Whitey Bulger. But there's also a big gun deal in the making that could be behind the shooting. Warned off her investigation by both Richie and his father, Sunny ignores both and learns that there was a woman long ago who may have been simultaneously involved with Desmond and a rival. So Sunny concludes that the motive for the shooting may stretch back 40 years or maybe only to yesterday. That narrows it down. Lupica, an award-winning sports columnist, author of 40 books, and longtime friend of the late Parker, nails the Sunny Randall character and the Boston criminal milieu that Parker created. The patter is snappy. The criminal honor codes are only understood by the criminals but are dismissed anyway when they interfere with personal enrichment. Even family loyalties come and go. Great stuff, Parker fans. Sunny's back!--Wes Lukowsky Copyright 2018 Booklist

Edgar finalist Lupica (Dead Air) does justice to the work of MWA Grand Master Robert B. Parker in this splendid continuation of the late author's Sunny Randall series. Sunny, a smart-aleck Boston PI, is wrestling with what role her ex-husband, Richie Burke, should play in her life. In her loneliness, she turns to psychiatrist Susan Silverman, a regular in Parker's Spenser series, for help in exploring her psyche. The stakes rise when a gunman shoots Richie, the son of powerful Irish mobster Desmond, with the intention of only wounding him, and tells Richie that he was paying for the "sins of the father." Sunny pursues the case, despite warnings to leave it alone from men on both sides of the law; her resolve only strengthens when escalating violence claims someone close to Richie. Lupica hits the sweet spot by balancing Sunny's professional hypercompetence with first-person narration that exposes her fears and self-doubts. Parker fans will look forward to seeing what Lupica does with Sunny in her next outing. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM. (Nov.) c Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.