Sunny one so true

She's a dame, all right. A dame like only a man can write her. For other men. For only a man could write a woman like a man so she'll appeal to men both as a man and as a woman.

That's Sunny Randall.

Sunny isn't sunny at all, disposition-wise. She's a smart alec. She says things like, "I had nothing to say about that, and I said it." She gets into it with a bad-ass pimp, and tells him, calmly, "I'm a small blonde cutie. You're a big ugly pimp. I shoot you, who's gonna take your side?"

The Sunny Randall novels remind me of what I hated about the TV show NYPD Blue: all the characters talk with the same distinctive mannerisms. Crooks, cops, teachers, kids, shopgirls, didn't matter. Snappy patter flowed equally snappily from all the characters' mouths.

So it is with Robert B. Parker's writing. See if you can tell which of these characters is the gangster, and which is the cop:

"You need help, you call me."

"I don't need help."

"You need attitude. The more things you can do, the more choices you have. You have more choices, life doesn't kick you around."

"So I learn to cook, my life will be better?"

"It could be worse."

Can you guess which is which? Either way, you're wrong. It's a conversation between Sunny, the blonde cutie smart-alec detective chick, and Millie, a fifteen year old prostitute runaway. Or runaway prostitute. That is to say, she ran away from home and became a prostitute, not that she ran away from being a prostitute.

Enough. Trying to write like Mr. Parker makes my left eye twitch. Thanks for the recommendation, Rex.