SPARE CHANGE: A Sunny Randall Novel
Robert B. Parker
Putnam
Mystery
ISBN-10: 0399154256
ISBN-13: 9780399154256

When Robert B. Parker, creator of the acclaimed Spenser detective series, decided about a decade ago to introduce two new mystery series, it probably caused some consternation among longtime fans who feared that Parker was tiring of Spenser. We need not have worried. The Spenser franchise is still as strong as ever.

And now, instead of doing one great book a year, Parker has been doing three. The author has been giving each of his series characters a novel per year. In addition to Spenser, there is female private eye Sunny Randall and Massachusetts chief of police Jesse Stone. Parker also recently completed his first book for young adults, EDENVILLE OWLS. He is indeed prolific.

SPARE CHANGE is the sixth Sunny Randall book. As far as we know, Sunny has never met Spenser. She is certainly not a female Spenser. Parker has demonstrated convincingly that he can write from a woman’s point of view.

Like Spenser, Sunny used to be a cop before she went private. Her father, Phil Randall, was a captain in the Boston police, now retired.

SPARE CHANGE is not just a mystery. It is a psychological study of the impact of the buried past upon the present. Phil is hired by the cops to be a consultant when they think that a serial killer who has been inactive for 20 years may have returned. He was in charge of the initial investigation and never caught the perpetrator.

The killer was nicknamed Spare Change due to his tendency to leave three coins beside his victims for unknown reasons. His only other characteristic was a tendency to taunt Phil by sending him notes, as the real-life Son of Sam killer, David Berkowitz, did with newspaper reporter Jimmy Breslin.

Now bodies with coins next to them begin appearing again in Boston parks and pathways. Phil Randall hires his daughter, Sunny, to work with him on the case.

Sunny is delighted to be working with the man she calls “Daddy.” She has competed all her life with, in her words, her “unpleasant mother” and “annoying sister” for her father’s attention. The pathology of the Randall family runs a little deeper than that. In fact, the mother is an out-of-control drunk and the sister a pretentious fool who uses men to get her father’s attention. And it has taken a toll on Sunny.

Sunny has problems of her own. Parker did the unique trick of putting both his non-Spenser protagonists in each other’s books last year. But not this time. Sunny’s love affair with Jesse Stone has hit the rocks, and her ex-husband Ritchie, who she has always loved, is ready to give up his current wife and try again with Sunny. Sunny desperately wants that, but she can’t be married again or even live with anybody and doesn’t know why. So she goes to Spenser’s love, Doctor Susan Silverman, for psychological help twice a week.

When the Boston police decide to trample upon the Constitution of the United States by detaining and questioning everybody in the vicinity of the killer’s most recent victim, and Sunny then decides to stretch the legal code by doing a little breaking and entering, a suspect quickly emerges.

Sure enough, the killer starts sending Sunny notes. And Sunny, much to her father’s chagrin, decides to use herself as sexual bait to catch the killer or, as she says, to engage in a little “playing” with him. The cat-and-mouse game quickly turns deadly as the victims begin to resemble Sunny.

Parker has always been great at creating memorable supporting characters, such as the incredible Hawk, sidekick of Spenser. In this series, we look forward to the appearance of Sunny’s pal, Spike. Spike is a 265-pound “grizzly bear” of a gay restaurant owner.

Parker writes, “Spike was wearing a black do-rag, a black tank top, and little wire-framed oval shaped sunglasses. He looked like a deranged biker.”

Spike perfectly captures Sunny’s motivation when he breaks down the case for her: “It’s been you father’s albatross for twenty years…You’re going to be the best daughter in the world. You’re going to solve it for him.”

And so she goes about trying to solve the case, danger be damned. The great crime writer James Ellroy said years ago that mystery writers rely too much on serial killer villains. Indeed, it has become a cliché of the genre. If there were as many real-life serial killers out there as there are in popular fiction, we’d really be living in an Age of Terror.

But SPARE CHANGE is the furthest thing from a cliché. Yes, there is a serial killer villain at work here. But Parker makes possibly the most unique twist on the old plot devise.

This book is more than a mystery; it is about the buried rivers of the past that run silent and generally dormant beneath the calm surface of our lives for decades. It is about the legacy that parents leave their children, the often destructive fruits of that legacy and the struggle to get free of them.

And as with any Robert B. Parker book, the writing is simple and powerful and perfect. No writer working today conveys as much information in as few words as Parker. Lawyers fresh out of school “smelled of diploma ink.” Or consider, “The overcast outside had spread into my apartment.” Or, alcohol “reiterated our humanness.” Finally, a PhD college professor can know several languages and all sorts of theory but have a “brain the size of a Rice Krispie.”

You don’t have to be a fan of mysteries to be a fan of Robert B. Parker. Those of us who love books are lucky that he has three such enjoyable series going at the same time. May we be so lucky for years to come. SPARE CHANGE is the perfect book to pack this summer for that trip to the beach or long vacation. You will not be disappointed.

   --- Reviewed by Tom Callahan

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