Rating: 
Summary: Action, Dialogue, limited Susan--almost perfect
Review: Any time a new Spenser book comes out, readers ask 'is the old Spenser back' or is this another obsessed with Susan, Hawk does the dirty work story? Well, the old Spenser is back and that's definitely good.Basic plot--beautiful widow comes to Spenser and asks him to find who killed her husband. Spenser can't turn down a beautiful woman so he takes the job but finds that Potshot Arizona is a mess. The Preacher's mob is collecting protection money from the town, depressing property values and generally being bad folks. The town fathers pay Spenser to bring in all of his tough guy buddies (from previous books in the series) and clean up the town. In POTSHOT, author Robert B. Parker delivers action, Spenser's trademark snappy dialogue, Hawk and Susan Silverman in small enough doses that you like them again, and uh, did I mention action. The testosterone will load you up for a week. I read the book in one sitting and couldn't turn the pages fast enough.... So, set aside your logical side and be prepared to wallow in some pretty good writing, story telling, dialogue, testosterone, and all-around classic Spenser....
Rating: 
Summary: Potshot
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Go West, Young Man: Potshot by Robert B. Parker
Review: You may not know it, but I actually rather like the Spenser novels. Very simplistic usually, they are guaranteed to have lots of action and minimal plot twists. Evil is usually just that, evil. No moralizing or explanation as to why the evil is evil, it just is and must be eradicated. Like any Steven Segal movie, these novels have their place. Sometimes you just want to sit back and read and know that the good guys will in all likelihood, save the day and maybe the fair maiden in distress. Sometimes, not thinking is good. The usual is true of this effort by Robert B. Parker. Spenser is far a field from his hometown of Boston, as he has been in the last several novels. This time, like many a "B" western on any late night cable channel, Spenser is called in to save the town and protect the fair maiden. Potshot, Arizona is a mall town catering to the new class that drives the American West, Yuppies. They have come, bought up the town, and at least some of them have plans to get rich any way they can. But, up in the old mining camp above the town lurks a gang of toughs of various stripes known as the Dell. The Dell is led by a charismatic figure known as The Preacher. The Preacher has organized the group and focused their energies on collecting protection monies from the town merchants. There was resistance to the protection payments and Steve Buckman led the resistance. Steve and the his wife (who would be the required fair maiden) Mary Lou Buckman ran a small outdoor day tour service. Steve is threatened publicly by the Dell with death and soon is dead in the middle of dusty Main Street with no witnesses. May Lou knows the Dell did it, she just isn't sure which one and hires Spenser to find the killer. Spenser first scouts out the situation and then recruits Hawk and all the usual suspects as he investigates the case. High Noon this is not, but the allusions to it are thick and heavy throughout this approximately 300-page hardback novel. This is Robert B. Parker at his usual smirking best and as such, can be an entertaining read, if so inclined. Long time Spenser fans will not be disappointed as the tradition continues.
Rating:
Summary: Parker's Potshot is modern "Shootout at O.K. Corral"
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: A Couple of Quibbles From Perfection
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Fun story, uneven narration
Review: Joe Mantegna, who played Spencer in the recent A&E movies, does a passable job in narrating this tale. His Spencer is erudite and dry, really done quite well. He does less well, though, with the other rolls. Hawk's accept is different every time he speaks. Susan and the other women sound -- well, anything but sexy. And I'm sure that, even with the "unabridged" label, there would have been some way to elide out the over-repetitive "he said"/"I said" bits of dialog -- what works well on the printed page is horribly distracting when read aloud. All that said, so to speak, it's a decent enough Spencer tale -- a "Magnificent Seven" with Spencer in the lead (and Hawk as Yul Brynner). A light and frothy audio book quite suitable for commute time.
Rating: 
Summary: Overall - worth the trip
Review: I'm relatively new to the Spenser series (I know - "Where have I been?!?"), so I don't have the history to rank this against the earlier work. In and of itself, it was a fun ride worth the read. I did read a couple of prior Spenser books and I think it's always fun when a character revisits characters from old stories. It was great to see the separate characters interact with each other. I do agree with another post that the limited Susan was a plus. That dialogue is getting a little worn. The Spenser/Hawk dialoque on the other hand - I'll never get sick of it. Joe Mantengna is a great narrator, but if you ever come across a Spenser novel read by Burt Reynolds (I heard Chance), it's a real trip!
Rating:
Summary: One more hit in the Spenser series
Review: Robert B Parker has a knack for bringing the reader right into the story he is telling. I have always been a fan of the TV series "Spenser for Hire" and listening to Joe Mantegna read Mr. Parker's work is one of the best combinations of reader and writer I have listened to in a long time. Spenser has been hired to find out who murdered Mary Lou Buckman's husband in the wealthy desert town of Potshot. It is believed that a gang of misfits called The Dell is responsible but the more Spenser looks into it, the less he believes this to be true. Also, there are ties between The Dell, the murder and several people of the town's citizens. Is the sheriff really a good guy, what's the real estate agent up to, and what is a movie producer doing in this small town? A group of the Potshot's leaders comes to Spenser and asks him to rid them of The Dell. In order to this, Spenser hires several of his own thugs. Each has his own special personality; - a Mexican, a gay, a Native American and of course, Spenser's favorite partner, Hawk, along with several others who have mob connections. Mr. Mantegna has the ability to give each character his own voice so the listener has no trouble knowing who is speaking. Spenser's long time squeeze, Suzanne is more than a little worried as he begins this case. Mr. Parker's tells of the desert heat and makes it feel real. He paints a picture in words of the mountains and the people and the listener can visualize them in his/her mind from his well written descriptions. He has created each character in such a way that makes you think you might know a person like that. The final chapter brings everything to a close but not in the way a reader might expect. Potshot is a story that is hard to put down until the reader finishes the book.
Rating:
Summary: Spencer becomes a bad guy.
Review: I listened to this via CD. Joe Mantegna does a tremendous job. The story is a bit of a departure. Spencer acts more like a bad guy than the detective of his previous novels. I enjoyed the story. However, It got bogged down when dealing with the Dell. The interplay of Spencer's gang is reminiscent of the dialog between Samuel Jackson and John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. I am looking forward to the next novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Phoning it in.
Review: Parker is a good writer, but I think he's fairly clearly bored with this series. It felt gimmicky and contrived and used irony in place of a plot. Not a good place to begin if you don't know the better books in the series.
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