When a beloved and prolific author the caliber of Robert B. Parker passes away, as he did in 2010, he leaves behind a hole that seemingly cannot be filled, and all the timeless characters he created are left in limbo. That is, until other great writers like Reed Farrell Coleman, Christopher Farnsworth and Mike Lupica pick up the mantle and keep things moving forward.

Another author who has stepped in to fill the void is Alison Gaylin. Her latest release, ROBERT B. PARKER'S BOOKED, is not only a worthy entry in the Sunny Randall series, it is also a scathing deep dive into the modern publishing industry and reveals a dark peek behind the curtain of how bestselling authors and novels are created and dismantled with equal ease.

"The characters here are all dynamic and fully fleshed out. Gaylin works gracefully to make ROBERT B. PARKER’S BOOKED an engaging and clever mystery from start to finish."

Sunny’s day takes a turn when she receives a phone call from one of her best friends, bestselling author Melanie Joan Hall, who insists that both her career and her life are over. Melanie is about to release her long-awaited memoir, Stronger Alone, but says its publication is now at serious risk due to the online shaming it receives from an anonymous book reviewer with the screen name Book Babe who posts her reviews on a site called ReadAnon.

The scathing review prompts Melanie to resort to an immediate drinking binge. In the middle of it, she chooses to respond in a highly unprofessional manner to what she deems to be a troll seeking to ruin her career. Regrettably, many people see these posts before she can take them down. The onslaught of anti-Melanie sentiment is blowing up the internet, essentially canceling her.

Once Melanie’s longtime publisher, Scepter, decides not to move forward with her memoir and eventually terminates her long-term contract, she turns to Sunny to help in outing Book Babe and righting this downward spiral that her life and career has now become. Sunny and her team assume that Book Babe is most likely a woman, as they found older posts where she discussed her pregnancy. This narrows it down somewhat as Sunny continues to push Melanie to think of anyone she may have wronged who would have reason to come after her in such a public way.

The first suspect is actress Natalie Blythe, whom Melanie had fired from the film version of her novel, A Girl and Not a God. Sunny and her colleagues locate Natalie, who is now a yoga and New Age healing practitioner, and they become convinced after a long discussion that she is not Book Babe. Plus, she had signed an NDA after her termination from the movie and is still being paid out by Melanie’s agent.

All eyes then move to author Leila Donnelly, who seems to be filling the void created by Melanie’s firing from Scepter and who Book Babe is now heralding. Sunny has a rather good feeling that they may be on the right track after chatting with Leila, who is somewhat combative. However, before they can officially out her, Book Babe is found murdered. Now, a full-on homicide investigation is taking place with Melanie at the center of it as the publicly decried suspect.

Watching Sunny Randall operate is always a thing of beauty. The characters here are all dynamic and fully fleshed out. Gaylin works gracefully to make ROBERT B. PARKER’S BOOKED an engaging and clever mystery from start to finish.