Customer Reviews

Potshot

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(41)
3 star:		(25)
2 star:		(20)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

It is always a pleasure to read a Spenser novel by Robert B. Parker. He has written another winner with his new novel, "Potshot". Mary Lou Buckman hires Spenser to find out who killed her husband, Steve. Spenser must go to Potshot, Arizona where the Buckmans lived and where the murder took place. As he investigates, he finds that many people believe that someone in the Dell killed him. The Dell is a group of thugs who collect "protection" money from businesses in Potshot. Their leader is known as The Preacher. Then a group of Potshot VIP's hire Spenser to rid Potshot of the Dell. Spenser can solve the murder alone, but will need a small army to take on the Dell. He hires Hawk and Vinnie Morris from Boston, Tedy Sapp, a bouncer from Georgia, 2 Los Angeles thugs, and Bernard J. Fortunato, a tough guy from Las Vegas. Things are never what they seem in Potshot. This is an excellent addition to a long-running series, one of the best in American crime fiction.

As an avid Spenser fan for the past 15 years, I bought this book the day it came out. After devouring it in one sitting - my son went to bed early that night! - I am left with very mixed emotions.

The story itself is good, but not great. Mary Lou Buckman hires Spenser to find out what happened to her husband in the half tourist trap/half backwater town of Potshot, AZ. As always, the beautiful blonde client is honesty-challenged, the wife of the local real estate broker is after him, and the head cop is involved (think Walking Shadow). This is not one of his better plot lines - see Sudden Mischief or Ceremony for a true mystery/whodunnit type book.

Reading Parker, however, always involves much more than the plot. His clean, elegant writing style and story pacing is without par, and no one delivers the dry humor the way Parker does. If Potshot were simply another in the Spenser series, I would be inclined to rate it three stars and chalk it up as a solid but not terrificaly distinguished entry.

I have read some of the other reviews of this book, and a few people seemed to catch on to the fact that something is changing in the world of Spenser. This book has the feel of a farewell, and speaking as someone who has read this series since my teen years, that really bothers me. The clues are there: Spenser rounded up EVERYONE of distinction from his previous novels (he even included a brief reference to Mei Ling, the Chinese student who served as a translator and Hawk's girlfriend in Walking Shadow), he mentions that the beloved Pearl is getting old, and even Susan contributes to the feeling by giving up shopping (!) to take a long drive with Spenser. Minor details, I realize, but it definitely gives the book a different flavor from all the previous entries.

If you are new to Spenser, I'd really recommend that you start with a different book. The Godwulf Manuscript is the first, but if you aren't interested in starting that early (the time frame is early 70's), try starting at Ceremony or Valediction. These offer great writing without the angst of Susan's midlife crisis, which is interesting but better understood if you are a Parker fan. Even Hugger Mugger - the book just prior to Potshot - would introduce you to standard Parker stories.

If you are a fan, get ready to start mourning the loss of Spenser. While he may do one more Spenser book, Parker has expanded his writings, and the new series seems to be replacing Spenser (although retaining a few of the same characters).

When Spencer first talks to Mary Lou Buckman about investigating the death of her husband he knew it would be a tough job. After all, the suspects were a gang of 40 ne'er-do-wells living in the hills around Potshot, Arizona. These western gangsters had recently been organized by a sociopath known as 'The Preacher,' and were terrorizing the town.

A visit to Potshot Spencer that there is something rotten going one. The town, nestled in the mountains was a Mecca for those suffering from urban flight syndrome. Aside from the Preacher and his 40 thieves Potshot's resident population includes a suspiciously inactive police force, a non-productive film producer and a real estate salesman with a way oversexed wife. Spencer quickly discovers that it isn't just Bebe the real estate women who is oversexed. It's seems that almost all the cast has had some history with each other.

Realizing this was far more than a one-man job Spencer heads back to Boston to assemble a militia of tough guys that reads like the Robert B. Parker hall of fame. Naturally Hawk is included, and Vinnie, another Boston professional, Tedy Sapp from Georgia, Bernard J. Fortunato, and finally Chollo and Bobby Horse from Los Angeles. This adds up to seven, and if you are getting the feeling that Parker is parodying The Magnificent Seven a bit, you might not be wrong.

In addition, while investigating Mary Lou in Los Angeles Spencer is menaced by two employees of Morris Tannenbaum, one of the big West Coast gangster chiefs. It's pretty clear that all is not what it seems, but Spencer is unable to resolve his suspicions. Before he does so, we will be treated to star-crossed lovers, a menacing cartel, and, lest we forget, the gunfight at the not-quite-OK Corral

Parker specializes in terse, pithy dialogue and plenty of often violent action. Spencer, whose heritage includes Marlowe and Travis McGee, is at his best as the in-your-face, wisecracking detective who is also perfectly capable of quoting poetry and maintaining a tender relationship with Susan, his psychologist girlfriend.

In "Potshot" the continuous by-play between the seven heroes adds sparkle to an already exceptional story. I've read all of Parker's Spencer novels, and this will rank as one of the most memorable. Certainly it's one of the most entertaining. Parker has again managed to write a rich and compelling novel in a genre noted more for its excesses than its quality of writing.

Recently, Parker has been a letdown. From Thin Air on, his books have lost a lot of their luster, but then Hugger Mugger (his last Spencer) came along and I had hopes that the series was coming back. Potshot goes a long way to undoing the damage done by the few bad books in the series. In this book, Spenser finds himself out of Boston and in the middle of a town in the desert used as a getaway by rich people. His client wants him to chase out a gang of toughs that have apparently killed her husband. To deal with the militant group, Spenser calls forth a whole rogues gallery of people that he has run across in previous books: From his affable sidekick Hawk, or the silent mob gunman Vinnie, and the dangerous hispanic Chollo, to the gay bouncer, Tedy, from Hugger Mugger, the gang's all here. Spencer quickly ascertains that not everything is as it seems and continues to poke his nose in every place that it is not welcome. Fans of the Susan Silverman character might be disappointed as she is not in the book much. To those critics who feel that this rogue's gallery of characters is a selling ploy, I can only shrug. Some of the best points in this book came from the scenes where this mishmash of thugs were just trying to get along. Parker's wit is as sharp as ever and his descriptions are concise and powerful. He is in top form. My only gripe, if this can even be called a gripe, is that this is an incredibly quick read. I finished it the day that I received it. Although I generally recommend that people start at the beginning of the series so they can get a full grasp of all the characters and relationships involved, but I can see no reason why newcomers wouldn't enjoy this novel. A must!

Weak. This feels like the 4th book in a 5 book deal that the publisher basically had to drag out of the author. I've very much enjoyed all of Parker's novels these last 30 years, but each book gets more and more lightweight and less compelling. He seems to like the characters so much that he will never allow them to change. The last truly significant thing that happened to Spenser, Susan and Hawk in the series was over 10 books ago, in A Catskill Eagle. The positives: precious few . . .the dialog is still basically good, if somewhat familiar...The negatives: too short, there is plot and character here left dangling, alot of it. The biggest negative though, is logic. I don't normally sweat the logic of hardboiled detective mysteries that closely, but this time there are several key points about the plot that simply do not make sense. Why, for instance, did Spenser's employer for this book even HIRE him?

But my biggest question is, if the author set out to write an homage to The Magnificent Seven, which he clearly did, why didn't he do more with it? One of the most powerful parts of that movie is the subplot of the youngest hired gun falling in love with the local girl. It's even much better done in the true source, Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. There was a great deal of resonance between Spenser and the old leader of the seven (Takashi Shimura's wonderful 'Kambei') as well as the cheerful companion (Hawk as 'Gorobei'), but none of Parker's seven served the pivotal role of the youngest gunfighter trying to fit in (the amazing Toshiro Mifune as 'Kikuchiro'.) Granted, Parker wants to write his own story, but since he seemed to have spent so little time and effort doing that, why not use more of the source material to provide a genuine novel, rather than Spenser-lite?

I genuinely like to read Parker's newer series, but after this book I'm starting to think he should leave Spenser to exist in his own mythos, as Conan Doyle did with Holmes. Or kill him off. But if more novels are coming about this character, at least let him act his age, which by this point should be his late 60s. Reminiscences of the Korean war and references to Waco from the same character make the perpetual 40 year old detective seem kind of absurd.

Robert B. Parker is my favorite author. I'm a prolific reader, so that's no faint praise. So when I was online ordering Potshot, Parker's latest in the best-selling Spenser private-eye series, Amazon's offer of another newly published Parker novel, Gunman's Rhapsody, was an easy sell.

As prolific an author as Parker is, with two other series already underway, the Jesse Stone cop novels and the Sunny Randall private-eye novels -- the latter a female version of Spenser -- Parker can never publish too often for me. I've read all his books and my only complaint is they're never long enough. I would avidly consume a War and Peace-sized tome by Parker.

Parker's Potshot was worth the wait while I consumed Gunman's Rhapsody. Potshot is number 31 in the Spenser series about the toughest of tough guys and his friends and enemies.

In Potshot, Spenser leaves his Boston turf to go west to the old mining town of Potshot, Arizona, collecting along the way a thug's gallery of friends and former foes turned buddies.

In fact, most if not all of Spenser's thug buddies first turned up in earlier novels as foes but were won over by the tough but humorous private-eye's winning ways. Even his oldest buddy, the menacing black underworld figure Hawk, first met Spenser when they were in the process of pounding each other into submission in a prize-fight ring many years hence. Joining Hawk and Spenser in Potshot are fellow Boston gangster Vinnie Morris, gay Georgia bodybuilder Tedy Sapp, California gangsters Hispanic thug Chollo and Kiowa thug Bobby Horse, and Las Vegas tough guy Bernard J. Fortunato.

It's a modern-day remake of "The Magnificent Seven" against a gang of 40 thieves led by an Ali Baba character named The Preacher, who is robbing and terrorizing the Los Angeles refugees now settled in Potshot.

Just figuring out just what everybody is really fighting over in Potshot takes up most of the tale, but trust Spenser, Hawk and the other members of this thug's roundtable to finally sort it all out.

Throw in a beautiful blonde as Spenser's client and another assortment of foes from the Los Angeles Mafia and among the so-called "good guys" in Potshot and you have yet another Spenser tale that comes slowly to a boil and erupts in a shootout worthy of the O.K. Corral.

As usual, the tale ends far too soon for this avid reader. The dialog alone between Spenser and his buddies is worth reading a second time.

With his sharper-than-a-machette dialogue, Robert Parker just can't write a bad book and this is certainly a very good one. But let's start first with the quibbles that separate very good from great, or 5 stars from 4 stars. This reviewer has two. The continual dirty innuendo talk with Susan (otherwise almost invisible in this book) has turned from cute to uncomfortable, and, for the third straight Parker novel, some of the villains escape justice. As he ages, is Parker just talking about sex and is he seeing the world in less certain terms? Whatever, his writing is as brilliant as ever and his plotting in this one is very good indeed, complicated and varied. Mary Lou Buckman, a beautiful blonde damsel in distress, comes to Spenser after her husband is murdered, she says, by a gang of outlaws terrorizing the idle rich in the getaway community of Potshot, Arizona. Spenser, drawing from his past adventures (read that novels), enlists the redoubtable Hawk and five other good-guy villains as a posse and the magnificent seven set out to clean up potshot. Of course they do and of course things aren't quite as they seem, but it's a journey you will be glad to have been along on when you reach the conclusion of this easy read.

Actually, I would like to classify the book as 3.5 stars, as this was a seemingly different type of Spenser novel. However, it is Robert Parker, and he gets the benefit of the doubt with the fourth star.

Private Eye Spenser is back when Mary Lou Buckman hires him to find out who killed her husband, Steven, in the town of Potshot, Arizona. In working on the case, he is further employed by some of the higher members of the city to eliminate the seedy outlaws that make up the Dell. Led by a older man named The Preacher, this group of ruffians run the town, collecting money and instilling fear in all of the citizens.

Spenser recruits a lot of his old friends, including the ever-popular Hawk, that have made appearances in several other books. There are a few turns, but not as many twists as usual in other Spenser books.

The one thing that Parker books all have in common is that they are loaded with dialogue. It makes up most of this novel, and it is meshed quite nicely with his clear writing style.

POTSHOT is a good effort, and has a decent enough storyline to make for entertaining reading, but it is not quite up to the usual Spenser standards. First time Spenser readers should start with one of his earlier books.

Robert B. Parker's been writing Spenser novels so long that at this point I think it's almost Zen. He writes so sparingly that it's almost more important what he *doesn't* write than what he does, which would be very confusing if this was the first Parker novel that you read. Fortunately for Parker, he's got legions of fans who've followed Spenser and Hawk and Susan through 25 books or so, and they have no trouble.

This time around, Spenser's hired by a beautiful blonde with a strange personality. Her husband's been killed in a small town in Arizona named Potshot, where they lived and ran a horseriding business. It seems everyone knows a gang of thugs that have coalesced into a primitive form of organized crime, and everyone knows they killed hubby Steve. No one in the town, however, least of all the local cop, is willing to do anything about it, so she hires Spenser. He decides to poke around and see what happens, in typical Spenserian detective style. Most detectives bother to look for clues: Spenser's found that it's a waste of time.

The bad guys duly show up, led by a maniac known as the Preacher. They have a confrontation, and Spenser decides that they outnumber him, so he leaves, collects Hawk and a motley crew of associated thugs from past books, and returns to finish things, working on picking up clues in the meanwhile. His theory of letting the poking do the detecting only sort of worked.

All in all, this is a worthwhile Parker Spenser novel. It's entertaining to see all the tough guys he's had adventures with in the past together at once. Sort of like the dream team in the Olympics, that first time.

"Potshot", Robert Parker's latest Spenser novel, gets back on familiar ground, if not a familiar location. After the tersely unmysterious "Hugger Mugger", Parker has Spenser cracking wise and being tough in Potshot, Arizona, where he's investigating the death of a high school football coach turned outfitter at the request of the deceased's pretty blond wife. All fingers are pointing towards the Preacher, who heads a gang of thugs who have been terrorizing Potshot (and driving down property values in the bargain), but Spenser has his doubts. Hired by Potshot's city council to clear out the thugs, Spenser heads back to Boston to recruit the ever-ready Hawk, then travels around to complete his posse with bad guys from previous books (including gay club-owner/tough guy Tedy Sapp from "Hugger Mugger", who's a dead ringer for Spike in Parker's Sunny Randall novels). Twists and turns abound, but Spenser, in his usual Renaissance Thug style, comes out the winner as always.

"Potshot" is a much better book than "Hugger Mugger," mainly because it has Spenser doing what he does best--busting heads, enjoying good food, and romancing Susan Silverman. He hasn't slowed down a whit, considering that if Parker's timeline is correct, Spenser is approaching seventy (Parker briefly mentions Spenser's time in Korea--do the math). Parker's prose is at once spare and elegant, with the usual great dialogue. Parker fans should enjoy it; newcomers, however, may want to start with an earlier novel.