Perish Twice [Bargain Price] [Hardcover]

Robert B. Parker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2, 2000

Spenser creator Robert B. Parker returns with his newest heroine, Boston P.I. Sunny Randall, coming to the aid of three very different women in three very dangerous situations. One is for business. One is for a friend. One is for family. And all could be fatal...

--This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

What mystery fan hasn't heard by now that Robert B. Parker created his Sunny Randall series expressly for good friend Helen Hunt, with an eye toward the actress playing the petite blonde investigator on the silver screen? Although the series has been touted as a radical departure for Parker (a woman in the lead, by gum!), so strongly do Boston PI Sunny and her cohorts resemble Boston PI Spenser and his pals that the movie's casting director might prefer a blond-wigged Robert Urich. But Parker's quick quips, droll wit, and staccato dialogue are all on display in the latest Randall novel, Perish Twice, so in spite of the reworked characters, there's still plenty to enjoy.

When radical feminist Mary Lou Goddard hires Sunny to protect her from a stalker, Sunny accepts the case with some reluctance. After all, Goddard detests Rosie, Sunny's bull terrier, canine vacuum, and stakeout companion ("Rosie was in the passenger seat, staring out the side window, alert for the appearance of a strange dog at whom she could gargle ferociously."). It doesn't take Sunny long to track down and confront Lawrence Reeves, a particularly pestilential human being. But pestilence is no excuse for murder, so when Reeves and Gretchen Crane, one of Goddard's colleagues, are both found dead, Sunny dives into the murky waters of Boston's prostitution industry, where Reeves was a client and Gretchen was trying to unionize the workers. Politics and sexuality can be a nasty tangle, and the unraveling threads lead straight to mobster Tony Marcus's door. Tony may appreciate Sunny's sharp wit, but business is business: interference can--and does--lead to a bullet with her name on it. And as if all of this weren't enough, Sunny's sister and her best friend are in the throes of nasty divorces. Luckily, the leap from PI to marital counselor is well within Sunny's abilities.

While there's no doubt that rabid Parker fans will snap up anything the author turns out (and with reason), Perish Twice may be more appealing to new readers, for whom Sunny's charm will carry none of the uneasy echoes of private investigators past. --Kelly Flynn --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Boston PI Sunny Randle, given her second outing here, is to Parker's veteran PI Spenser as Pepsi is to Coke: a bit lighter and sweeter, but still the real deal. And in the literary equivalent of a blind taste test, you'd be hard pressed to tell them apart; this second Sunny novel, even more than her first (Family Honor), is a Spenser book wearing a skirt. About now, the author's fans might be yearning for a change of pace of the sort Parker has offered in his stand-alones and his Jesse Stone series; still, what's here is quite good. The novel revolves around assorted couples' dysfunctional liaisons. In one significant subplot, Sunny's obnoxious and spoiled sister, Elizabeth, hires Sunny to trail her husband, whom she suspects of having an affair; when Sunny catches the lothario, Elizabeth leaves him and begins to sleep around. In another, Sunny's old therapist pal, Julie, is having troubles with her beloved and is also starting to date. And in the novel's main plotline, a lesbian activist who hires Sunny to protect her from a stalker also turns out to be stuck in a web of infidelityAand murder. Two killingsAa man Sunny pinpoints as the stalker, and a woman who works for the activistAeventually bring Sunny into the orbit of scary black gangster Tony Marcus, who runs prostitution in Boston. The scenes involving Sunny, Marcus and Marcus's underlings crackle with tension and sometimes violence; the rest of the novel presents a wholly absorbing puzzle of confused motives and whodunits that Sunny picks at as doggedly as any PI going. With its smooth blend of mystery, action and psychological probings, this is yet another first-rate, though not innovative, offering from a reliable old master. 15-city author tour. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 293 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Putnam (October 2, 2000)
• ISBN-10: 0399146687
• ASIN: B00006G9KX
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (66 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,002,037 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robert B. Parker (1932-2010) has long been acknowledged as the dean of American crime fiction. His novel featuring the wise-cracking, street-smart Boston private-eye Spenser earned him a devoted following and reams of critical acclaim, typified by R.W.B. Lewis' comment, "We are witnessing one of the great series in the history of the American detective story" (The New York Times Book Review). In June and October of 2005, Parker had national bestsellers with APPALOOSA and SCHOOL DAYS, and continued his winning streak in February of 2006 with his latest Jesse Stone novel, SEA CHANGE.

Born and raised in Massachusetts, Parker attended Colby College in Maine, served with the Army in Korea, and then completed a Ph.D. in English at Boston University. He married his wife Joan in 1956; they raised two sons, David and Daniel. Together the Parkers founded Pearl Productions, a Boston-based independent film company named after their short-haired pointer, Pearl, who has also been featured in many of Parker's novels.

Parker began writing his Spenser novels in 1971 while teaching at Boston's Northeastern University. Little did he suspect then that his witty, literate prose and psychological insights would make him keeper-of-the-flame of America's rich tradition of detective fiction. Parker's fictional Spenser inspired the ABC-TV series Spenser: For Hire. In February 2005, CBS-TV broadcast its highly-rated adaptation of the Jesse Stone novel Stone Cold, which featured Tom Selleck in the lead role as Parker's small-town police chief. The second CBS movie, Night Passage, also scored high ratings, and the third, Death in Paradise, aired on April 30, 2006.

Parker was named Grand Master of the 2002 Edgar Awards by the Mystery Writers of America, an honor shared with earlier masters such as Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen.

Parker died on January 19, 2010, at the age of 77.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Sunny's second outing has a lot of echoes, October 5, 2000

By 

New World Smurf "new_world_smurf" (Richmond, Virginia) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Perish Twice (Hardcover)

Robert Parker's newest character, Boston P.I. Sunny Randall, returns in "Perish Twice," but this time she's juggling the role of relationship counselor along with her usual sleuthing duties. Her snooty sister learns of her husband's mistress and plunges into bouts of self-pity mixed with revenge; her best friend, bored with her marriage, has an affair, and a lesbian feminist becomes increasingly unhelpful when it's revealed that her stalker might know her more intimately than she's willing to admit. Through it all, Sunny struggles with her own relationship with her ex-husband Richie and comes closer to danger with each new twist of her case.

It's still too early to tell where Parker will take the character of Sunny. At this point, she still seems like the female equivalent of Parker's most famous character, Spenser, albeit a bit more ladylike. The book itself is fairly typical, uninspired Parker--the plot is reminiscent of an early Spenser novel, "Looking For Rachel Wallace." Sunny's relationship with Richie echoes a similar situation with Parker's other character Jesse Stone. Parker fans will experience a lot of deja vu with "Perish Twice," but it's still a fairly enjoyable read.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Variations on a Theme, October 3, 2000

By 

Charles R. Slater - See all my reviews

This review is from: Perish Twice (Hardcover)

No, the title I've chosen does not refer to Robert Parker creating a sort of female Spenser in Sunny Randall. Rather this, Sunny's second case, is itself more a series of studies of the varied and tortured physical relations women get into. There's the radical feminist who's a lesbian with a heterosexual itch to scratch; the former prostitute who drifted from respectable married life to lesbian promiscuity; the unhappy wife who deserts her husband and children to find herself; and the overly dependent wife who discovers her husband is cheating and strikes out on her own, a role for which she is singularly unqualified. Then there's Sunny herself, enjoying a perfectly good relationship with the man she's divorced. Somewhere along the way, three people get murdered because of the dirty little complications in the first two relationships above. That the last two confused women are Sunny's best friend and sister adds to the intrigue. But it also adds to the confusion as Sunny hops from emotional problem to emotional problem while trying to solve a well disguised mystery, knowing solving it could also be fatal. It works, well sort of, only because of Parker's genius with sparse prose and clipped, incisive dialogue. And because the heroine is so damn likeable. Still, it's not fully satisyfing and, as he did in Hugger Mugger, Mr. Parker's ending is also unsatisfyingly unresolved. Parhaps as he grows older, Mr. Parker is trying to tell us that the black and white of the young Spenser's world hardly exists. If that's the message, it doesn't quite work. Sort of like this novel.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Defining What It Means to Be a Healthy Woman Today, June 12, 2001

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 109,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Perish Twice (Hardcover)

Perish Twice is the second in Robert Parker's new series about his female private detective, Ms. Sunny Randall. No one who reads the story will miss the similarities to Spenser. Through the parallels, you can begin to see more clearly Mr. Parker's thesis about what being a good, honest person should be about. What constitutes a proper life for women and men is remarkably similar. As in the Spenser books, most people don't get it. His interpretation of the proper feminist version of goodness and a healthy mind becomes more obvious in Perish Twice than in any other book by Mr. Parker. This transparency is helped by his setting up so many alternative models of women who are either phony, hypocritical, or miserable (or perhaps a little of each). As with the previous Sunny Randall book, Family Honor, this one makes Sunny a little too dependent on her hoodlum ex-in-laws to be totally palatable.

The story has four major plot lines. The primary one revolves around a bodyguard job that Sunny does for a high profile feminist, Ms. Mary Lou Goddard. Someone is threatening Ms. Goddard. Sunny soon spots a stalker and tracks him down. The path from there takes many twists. The second one involves Sunny's sister Elizabeth who wants to know if her husband is cheating on her. Sunny quickly finds out that he is, and Sunny plays chaperone and analyst for her emotionally floundering and confused sister. The third relates to her friend, Julie, who suddenly walks away from her marriage. The fourth continues Sunny's relationship with her ex-husband, Richie. Each plot line crosses the others from time to time, providing for a rewarding set of developments.

The mystery in the book has two very interesting features. First, it develops surprising depth after what appears to be a very simple beginning and initial plot. Second, Mr. Parker leaves the ending at a place where many stories don't end. As a result, you will have many thoughts about what the story means that you would not otherwise have. That's a fine bit of writing. So you have at least two nice surprises to look forward to enjoying.

After you finish this book, you should think about why connecting to other people is so difficult and painful. Another useful question might be why we don't draw more love and support from our connections to one another. What's missing?

Put honoring your values ahead of pursuing your needs, if you want to enjoy self-respect.