This is an old story that has had several previous incarnations. The original story was “Seven Samurai” by Akira Kurosawa and then there was the Hollywood original movie “The Magnificent Seven”, followed by a collection of weaker sequels. In “The Magnificent Seven” a Mexican village is being terrorized by a gang of criminals so they hire a group of seven mercenaries to clean up the town. The story starts when Mary Lou Buckman walks into Spenser’s office and seeks help in tracking down the murderer of his husband. They were living in the small desert town of Potshot and it was taken over by a gang of criminals who reside in an area called the Dell. They had been little more than a nuisance until a man arrived that is called the Preacher. He organized them and they began extorting protection money from local business people. Mary Lou’s husband had refused, so she believes that they killed him. Spenser takes the job and travels to the town. Almost immediately, he realized that things are not what they appear to be. Spenser confronts the Preacher and asks him if he had had Buckman killed. The response is no and Spenser believes him. There is the inevitable confrontation between Spenser and a small part of the Dell gang and the local law intervenes before the shooting starts. Several prominent business people then offer to hire Spenser to clean out the Dell and free the town. Spenser agrees and hires Hawk (black), Vinnie Morris, Chollo (Mexican), Bobby Horse (Indian), Tedy Sapp (gay) and Bernard J. Fortunato (short guy). Seven guys against 30 or 40 from the Dell. You know at this point that they are going to win in a final, climactic battle, so when it happens you are not surprised. At this point in the story, I stopped and counted how many were in Spenser’s gang and thought, “not seven again.” At some point in the sequence of these stories, the good-hearted mercenaries should learn to count and realize that seven against forty are very poor odds, unless the opponents are idiots. Unfortunately, they are in this case. Spenser’s gang is living in a house and they receive an advance warning that the Dell people are coming and they lay an effective trap. Given that Spenser had been able to stand down three of them by himself, they should have known that a frontal assault in daylight would be difficult. In any case, the “inevitable” happens and the Dell gang is defeated and many are killed. Given the predictability of the story, it is surprising that this story is as good as it is. That is because the identity of the murderer of Buckman’s husband is not revealed until the last and that Parker is so good at writing wisecracking dialog. Spenser and his crew are masters at the mild insulting style banter, which can be taken as a sign of affection. If the circumstances were different, it is quite possible that they would be shooting at each other, but since they are on the same team, they like each other. It is not the best Spenser novel by any means, but it passes the most stringent of tests. It is a novel that keeps your interest even when you know what is going to happen.This review also appears on Amazon
Robert B. Parker's Spenser series is one of my comfort reads. They're admittedly not great literature, there's lots of white space on the page, but you know exactly what you're getting. You're going to get Spenser and Hawk and a little bit of Susan as justice prevails and another crime is solved.In this book, Mary Lou Buckman comes to Boston to hire Spenser to solve the murder of her husband in Potshot, Arizona. She's been referred by a Los Angeles police officer she knew from before she moved to Potshot. You have to wonder why she'd travel all the way across the country to hire a private detective and why the LA officer didn't recommend someone local, but hey, this is a Spenser novel and he had to get there somehow. (I cut Parker a lot of slack because I like his books.)Spenser arrives and finds out that more than one man has followed Lou to Arizona from Los Angeles, despite the fact that she was married. Apparently both Lou and her husband played around, both before they left Los Angeles and afterwards. So these two men are immediate suspects in the murder, although one is the chief of police and another has a good alibi.The suspicion is that the murder was actually committed by someone from the Dell. Originally some kind of hippy-style community just outside the town of Potshot, it's recently become something more sinister since a character called The Preacher arrived. The Preacher and his minions have intimidated the town. They collect payments from the local businesses and promise something bad will happen to those who don't pay up. Lou's husband Steve openly opposed them.Spenser, of course, is intimidated by no one. When he, too, stands up to The Preacher, a group of local citizens approach him about cleaning up the Dell for a fee. Spenser thinks this is a good idea and goes back to Boston to pick up Hawk and recruits several other thugs from around the country to help out.Of course there is the typical Spenser wisecracking and macho posturing and Susan eating like a bird along with a couple of twists. It's standard Spenser fare, if you like that kind of thing. And I do. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.
What do You think about Potshot (2001)?
Spenser deals in lead, friend.A beautiful widow whose husband was murdered in the small desert town of Potshot, Arizona, hires Spenser. She thinks he was killed for standing up to a gang called The Dell that has been extorting local businesses. Spenser journeys to Potshot and confronts Preacher, the leader of gang, but he denies killing anyone. Before he can get to the bottom of who murdered the husband, Spenser is approached by a group of town leaders who want to hire him to run off The Dell. Spenser agrees and rounds up a crew of tough guys he’s met over the years including Hawk. Spenser and his friends are bad asses, but there are just seven of them while The Dell has forty members so the odds are stacked against them.Robert B. Parker wrote several westerns as well as making it clear that Spenser was a fan of them so it’s no surprise that he took a stab at doing yet another version of The Magnificent Seven. Hell, everybody from Stephen King to Star Wars comics has tried it at one time or another. The idea of Spenser rounding up a collection of professional tough guys he’s met over the years to clean up a town is an idea that had a lot of potential, but unfortunately RBP didn’t do enough to deliver on it.More than half the book is spent on Spenser trying to figure out who killed the husband and like most of his other books, a big part of it revolves around marital infidelity. Less than half the book is spent with Spenser and his friends together. This could have been a lot more fun if RBP would have just written the story as Spenser being hired to fight The Dell, putting together a group and then having the whole book be more of an action story rather than the kind of whodunit that seems very similar to every other one that he did in his later years.Still, there’s some fun to be had with Spenser and his buddies getting together. I especially like that his guys, who are mostly gun thugs for hire, want to just go and proactively slaughter The Dell and get exasperated that Spenser won’t allow it because of his own code of behavior. Tough guys bantering and shooting it out with an evil gang would be a lot more fun than just another Spenser case. Next up: Uh….It’s Widow's Walk, but I don’t remember a single thing about it to make one of my usual jokes.
—Kemper
I zoomed through all the Spenser novels in graduate school and I always LOVED the relationship between Spenser and Susan Silverman. I thought they were great books, and now I have had an opportunity to go back and read a couple (my dad was clearing off his bookcases). I was all set to like Potshot, but it just didn't move for me. I was ready to be wowed by seeing all Spenser's favorite thugs team up and it was really anticlimactic. The characters mostly weren't well drawn and their motivations didn't make much sense, so it was hard to care what happened. Even the travels with Susan fell pretty flat. I guess the biggest letdown for me was the ending. I just didn't get it. Spenser pretty much resolves his case and I have to say the villain wasn't particularly sympathetic but somehow she still comes out in one piece. I just don't get why he let her walk away. A man of few words, is Spenser, and sometimes that's a little frustrating. Not, I think, anywhere near Parker's best.
—Kirsten Kowalewski
Potshot is the usual Spenser story in that the humor of the dialogue and story is more important than the mystery involved in the tale. It is unusual for Spenser in that it takes him to Arizona from his usual Boston setting. Spenser is hired by beautiful widow to investigate the murder of her husband in small tourist town of Potshot, AZ. It quickly turns more complicated and Spenser has to bring in a few of his well armed business associates to solve the larger problem that crops up. Potshot is a harmlessly entertaining summer read that would be just as good in the winter.
—Hasan
