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!
Everything about Lupica’s work feels familiar, and his ability to mimic Parker’s voice is truly remarkable. Between Lupica, Coleman, and Atkins, Mike Lupica Clearly does the best job of staying true to Parker’s style. Everything from sentence structure to word choice, how he sets a scene to how he develops the characters, is spot-on and reads as if it were written by Robert B. Parker himself, something his diehard fans will almost certainly appreciate. Beyond that, the story is deftly plotted and moves fast, leading up to a memorable ending that’ll have fans begging for more ... Replacing an icon can’t be easy, but you wouldn’t know it by reading Robert B. Parker’s Blood Feud. Mike Lupica mixes a heavy dose of suspense with a shot of nostalgia, effortlessly delivering a relentless thriller that might just be the best book in the series so far.
Lupica does justice to the work of MWA Grand Master Robert B. Parker in this splendid continuation of the late author’s Sunny Randall series ... 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.
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.
