Potshot

Rating:
Summary: Spenser rides with the gang
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Potshot
Review: My husband and I are avid Parker fans. Joe Mantegna is an excellent Spencer.

The book is most likely great but we did not get to hear it. The tape broke the first time we tried to listen.

I would strongly suggest ordering books on CD whenever possible to avoid this situation.

Rating:
Summary: A real disappointment
Review: I have read every Spenser book, and this is the worst. Since when did Spenser become some amoral Western gunslinger? It's almost as if Parker had no new ideas so he concocted this nonsense to get a bunch of familiar characters in one place at one time without any story.

Rating:
Summary: Too much homage, not enough effort
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Magnificent on its own.
Review: Several other reviewers have made a point of calling this novel Parker's homage to the movie "The Magnificent Seven". Like many others, I enjoyed that movie. I even enjoyed the first sequel to it. What I didn't enjoy were the second and third sequels which had absolutely nothing to do with the original and were plainly lousy movies.

Lets kindly get real. This novel stands on its own and has nothing to do with "The Magnificent Seven" or any other movie.

The typos in this novel are obvious. The proof readers at Parker's publisher apparently did a poor job. It is also obvious that Spenser is modeled after his creator. Spenser, at age 70, acts like someone half his age. He needs to start thinking about retiring. As a classic womanizer before he met Susan Silverman in the second novel of the series, Spenser seems oblivious to the fact that there may well be some illegitimate children in his past no one is being told about. And given the fact that Spenser is a gourmet cook, does anyone wonder why there is no Spenser cookbook on the market?

This novel is only slightly better than "Hugger Mugger". But in spite of all these faults it is still a good read.

If Parker's readers want him to do a better job with Spenser, then perhaps they ought to write to him through his publisher and express their concerns directly to the sourse. Just maybe he will get the message.

Rating:
Summary: An Average Outing
Review: I've been reading the Spenser Series since 1980. I have always like the prose of Mr. Parker for its readability. Potshot provides a the same kind of escape from reality that an action movie provides. No new ground broken here, but a satisfying read just the same.

Rating:
Summary: Parker DOESN'T again
Review: Well, I thought it was a mistake for Parker to release 3 books in 1 year, and unfortunately, it looks like I was right. How sad to see someone who was once the master of his craft turning into a washed-up has-been who is churning out work as fast as humanly possible before his true fans wise up and stop buying. This book was a waste of good reading time. Out of ideas, Bob? Why don't you dredge up a whole lot of old characters from your real work and try to find a plot that can throw them all together in one place? This book is an arguement for the public library if I ever saw one. YAWN.

Rating:
Summary: Bullseye!
Review: Spenser heads west on a quest for the murderer of a dazzlingly pretty & fresh widow's husband. In Potshot, Arizona he encounters the intense desert heat, a yuppie western town, a horde of preying mountain men & a mystery that defies gravity.

Yes, Spenser is back with the beloved Susan nibbling her way deep into his heart & Hawk, dark & humorous, in the background.

Robert B. Parker doesn't write world-altering stories, that's not his intention. He does, however, write engagingly & Potshot is a bullseye!

Rating:
Summary: Less There There Than Usual
Review: Even given that the Spenser stories are confections, ephemeral in nature, and not to be too closely examined for structure and logic, this latest offering is way, way too airy. The collecting of all the other (non-Spenser) tough guys from previous books to give our hero a hand in his latest endeavour is an intriguing idea, but once Parker's got them together, he provides little for them to do, and his disinterest becomes manifest very quickly. Die-hard Spenser fans - and I am one - will be left feeling more unsatisfied than usual.

Rating:
Summary: A Potboiler From Parker
Review: If Robert Parker were half the man Spenser is he would have sent his great fictional creation to the Reichenbach Falls years ago. Instead Parker keeps dragging Spenser to new locales, hoping, perhaps, that a change of scenery will rejuvemate him. In "Potshot" the new locale is a small town in Arizona named, by coincidence, Potshot. Parker's travel ploys don't work because his ability to create a sense of place seems to diminish when he gets beyond the Boston beltway. Mostly what he tells the reader about Arizona is that it is hot.

Potshot, "Once a rendevous for mountain men", according to Spenser's client, is now a retreat for yuppies from Los Angeles. It is situated vaguely in the foothills of a mountain range Parker has relocated from Idaho to Arizona. The town's new residents are being shaken down and harassed by a large gang of old hippies and bikers, led by a cadaverous "Preacher", who occupy an old mine site in a higher neighboring valley called "the Dell". The Dell -- for God's sake, Parker -- the Dell?? Heigh-ho the derry-oh the outlaws in the dell. The Dell bears a passing resemblance to the Hole In The Wall, the bandit hideout in central Wyoming. The town fathers of Potshot need a gunslinger and they find one in Spenser.

Having borrowed scenery from all over the west, Parker has Spenser recruit six ill-assorted tough guys from his earlier books to help him deal with the Preacher and his forty thieves. Is this an ill-conceived homage to "Seven Samurai" and "The Mangificent Seven" or just another piece of magpie borrowing? Sadly, despite impressive slaughter, the effect of the big shootout is more comic than epic. Spenser throws himself behind conveniently-placed rocks and brush, firing his lever-action Winchester like a hero in an old Republic Pictures western.

There are hints of a more serious story glinting amid the cow pies in "Potshot". Development vs preservation: The real evil in Potshot is real estate speculation. New settlers in the mountain West vs the old residents. One of the hippy banditos tells Spenser, "We wuz here first". The spread of urban gangs into lightly-policed rural communities. But Parker is too busy propping tired old Spenser up to mine these possibilities. I think Robert Parker needs a new voice rather than new venues for his writing. It is time to let wisecracking, quixotic Spenser take his place among the heros in Valhalla.