Rating: 
Summary: Spenser's Magnificent Seven
Review: Parker's still one of the best. Potshots is a fun read and it's great that he's assembled all the colorful tough guys from past Spenser novels for a western-style finale to a very entertaining book. As a long time reader of the Spenser novels I recall Spenser telling Susan Silverman about his affinity for "The Magnificent Seven" (Spenser had seen the movie a dozen times and explained that the movie was like poetry and pattern). Count the number opposing the Dell's renegades and you'll see the parallels between "Potshot" and "The Magnificent Seven". A good time in print. I hope Parker lives forever. If you're a Parker fan or an Elmore Leonard fan I also recommend "Springer's Gambit" (Robert Parker also recommends it as his blurb graces the cover of 'Gambit')
Rating: 
Summary: A disapointment
Review: While the beginning kept my attention, the plot was weak, the characters were not very believable -- even the old stand bys like Hawk -- too worldly and intellectual -- for a tough guy goon. Even though I've been a Hawk fan in the past. And the ending was a boring let down. Not exciting or interesting. Kept hoping it would get better, but it didn't. Have been a Parker fan for years, and this was a disapointment.
Rating:
Summary: A Pot of Gold
Review: This is a great book. It starts out with a terrific plot. Spenser is hire by Lou to get rid a couple of thugs out of Potshot. But are things what they seem. Suspense will gripe you from page to page. The ending is killer. While this is not the best of series. But worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Fell flat on its face
Review: A pretty blonde from the little Arizona town of Potshot has hired Spenser to find out who killed her husband. Potshot is run by a bunch of thugs living in the Dell (a sort of Robin Hood slum outside town), and the thugs are run by Preacher, who just might be the killing culprit. So Spenser rounds himself up a bizarre group of henchmen (Hawk included, of course) and sets about cleaning up the town amid a hail of bullets.I'm sorry, folks, but when it comes to Spenser novels, POTSHOT just doesn't cut it. For one thing, by the time I reached the ending I could not figure out why the poor woman would have wanted to hire Spenser in the first place. Not only did that leave me with a nagging doubt (I hate having to figure out if I or the author made the mistake), but Joe Mantegna's voice was far too high and smooth to be Spenser's and I spent the entire audio book trying to adjust and failing. Plus there's little of Susan in here (of course, if you don't like her that might be a good thing), and there's far too much soul searching between men trying to decide why they're doing what they're doing and if what they're doing is the right thing and if they care. And then, naturally, the final showdown had to read like something out of the old west and leave me with my eyebrows fixed up in the middle of my forehead. I usually enjoy the Spenser novels. They're fun, quick reads that don't require a lot of thinking and usually have all the required elements. But POTSHOT, unfortunately, was none of the above.
Rating:
Summary: not one of his best
Review: My dad and I love Parker, he's one of our favorite authors. But this is not Parker at his best. In fact, we'd rate this one of the worst, if not the worst, in the Spenser series. Don't waste your money on the hard cover, get the paperback. The book lags too often in places and it seems to be written to bring in characters from other books.
Rating:
Summary: Spenser with an all-star cast of thugs
Review: This is an adequate Spenser novel, but I do get the idea that the series is near its natural end. The roundup of characters from previous books gives me the idea. And a strong similarity between this and the previous Spenser book seems like a bit of lazy writing. My reaction when I realized where the plot was going was a resigned, "What, again?" Spenser's hired to find the killer of a young woman's husband, but it's been established by her and the sherrif that the killer must be one of a gang headed by "The Preacher". After a bit of investigation, Spenser isn't so sure that the gang is responsible, but figuring the town would be far better without it agrees to being hired also to get rid of the gang. But he realizes that he alone or even with Hawk's help doesn't stand much of a chance against a gang of 40, so he enlists characters from the previous books. All in all, this is fun, but I personally have the feeling that author Parker and character Spenser are both tiring of the series.
Rating:
Summary: Average at Best
Review: I am a newcomer to Parker's Spenser series, which I know previously from the television series with Robert Urich. So I recently picked up an audio version of Potshot from the local library, impressed by the relatively small size of this unabridged version, as well as the excellent narrator (Joe Mantegna). While the adventures of Spenser and Hawk in this little Arizona town were sometimes entertaining, if this is indicative of the whole series I am in no rush to read (or listen to) the rest. Every line of dialogue involving Spenser is either needlessly smug and sarcastic (when he talks to everyone except girlfriend Susan)or needlessly risque and romantic (when chatting with Susan). The supposedly witty double entendres and sexual boasting exchanged between Spenser and Susan at EVERY turn just struck me as nonsensical, as if the couple is on a perennial honeymoon and Parker thinks his readers just eat this stuff up. Spenser seems jaded in every other exchange, the prototype "wiseguy", and after about 150 pages of it you yearn for a sincere line or two, like you might find in a Russo or McEwan novel. I know this is detective fiction, not Booker Prize material, but isn't the idea to portray real human beings in your story, and make your readers so engrossed in the story that they forget for a few hours they are listening to a fictional account? I never had that delusion here. As for the story, Spenser is hired by a young widow with some shady connections to many other leading citizens of Potshot, a small town in Arizona terrorized by a lawless band of rogues known as the "Dell." Spenser's client believes her husband was killed by the Dell, because he would not pay them protection and stood up to them, and for a reason unknown to us readers Spenser decides to put his life on the line, and do what the local sheriff's office concluded was impossible, ie clean up the town. The whole thing had the ring of an average to below average movie which went direct to video, maybe starring Tom Skerritt and/or Chuck Norris. Some of the other rogues brought in by Spenser (by calling in favors) to help him clean up the town made this story somewhat entertaining, but overall I think it was a pretty weak effort.
Rating: 
Summary: Ocean's Eleven Spenser Style
Review: Although I have read all the Spenser novels from the time they were first published, and I love the books and the characters like old friends, this book is so thin and lightweight that it's almost not there. Parker has gotten increasingly lazy and simplistic, plot-wise and character-wise, particularly in recent years and, when one looks back to the early books, the difference is super clear. While someone like Robert Crais only gets stronger and better, and James Lee Burke maintains his high level of writing throughout his Robicheaux series, Parker is running out of gas. He's writing on fumes.
Rating: 
Summary: Spencer meets the WildWest
Review: I've been looking forward to this book since I first heard the idea mooted. Lived up to expectations. Thoroughly enjoyable but why not invite Chollo?
Rating:
Summary: A cut above the recent average
Review: Take a heaping scoop of the Magnificent Seven, throw in a few sprinkles of Chinatown and the Maltese Falcon, and turn it into a Spenser novel, and you'll have done what Parker does here. While nowhere near the personal intensity of the earlier Parker works, it's a definite cut above the other novels he's been cranking out of late. The difference between then and now -- aside from the author having found a successful formula and just coasting with it -- is that the early Spenser had internal doubts, struggles, and passions unrequited. The current Spenser is happy with himself, happy with his work, happy with his relationship with Susan, and deeply content -- which, gun-toting mobs, dangerous gangsters, and treacherous townsfolk aside, means there's not much *there* there in this first person narration. It was disturbingly enjoyable to see all the different "deadly hoodlums" that Spenser has encountered and learned to respect gathered up here to help liberate the town of Potshot. It was helpful to see that they were not all carbon copies of each other -- though sometimes the differences are little more than handful of cardboard mannerisms. The disturbing part comes in when you realize what sort of legbreakers, shooters and button-men these guys really are, and how easily Spenser puts that out of his head while dealing with them. Folks who enjoy Parker will enjoy Potshot. Folks who haven't ever encountered the author before will, hopefully, be driven to some of his earlier work after they go through this one.
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