Rating: 
Summary: Spenser's Wild West adventure
Review: "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.
Rating: 
Summary: Extremely Far-Fetched
Review: Arizona state police allow (and silently condone) Spenser gathering together a posse of homicidal thugs to do battle over a little town? Yeah, right.
Once again Spenser decides pretty and sexy must equal innocence. And when the truth is reveal, he allows homical pretty and sexy to walk away scot free.
His writing ability is still excellent, but I think his age is affecting his ability to creat reasonable scenarios. Too bad.
Rating:
Summary: A Different type of Spenser
Review: 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).
Rating: 
Summary: just plain bad
Review: How can a book that is at least 125 pages too long manage to have an abrupt and unfulfiling conclusion? Maybe if Parker would quit cranking out books like they were on an assembly line, he might produce a work that is at least entertaining.
Rating:
Summary: just plain bad
Review: How can a book that is at least 125 pages too long manage to have an abrupt and unfulfiling conclusion? Maybe if Parker would quit cranking out books like they were on an assembly line, he might produce a work that is at least entertaining.
Rating:
Summary: Sad
Review: I enjoy the Spenser series. I have read maybe 10 so far, and plan on getting them all eventually. The characters are fun, the stories are interesting, the dialog is perky, and the action is exciting. Sure, I often skim over a lot of the "Susan" stuff, and I do get tired of over-long descriptions of food/clothing. But I generally enjoy these books.
Potshot is easily the worst one I have encounted. Admittedly, the typical "Spencer" plot is not a paragon of coherance/continuity. In "Potshot", however, it becomes so problematic that it detracts a lot from enjoyment of the story. I won't bother to list the holes and inconsistancies here, it's just not worth the time. Other reviews have mentioned the unsatisfiying ending, so I won't dwell on that either. All I will say is that, as I turned the last page and closed the book, I was filled with disappointment. "Phoned it in" was my first thought.
I do strongly recommend this series. But this is NOT the one to start with.
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: 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: 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: 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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