Product Description
Boston P.I. Spenser returns — heading west to the rich man's haven of Potshot, Arizona, a former mining town recently reborn as a paradise for Los Angeles millionaires looking for a place to escape the pressures of their high-flying lifestyles. When a band of modern-day mountain men, led by a charismatic individual known as The Preacher, takes over the town, even the local police are powerless to defend the residents in the face of the clever, dangerous gang. Spenser assembles a group of his own, including the redoubtable Hawk, to beat the gang at their own dangerous game and form the nucleus of a real police force to watch over the town when he's gone.
Amazon.com Review
Maybe Spenser's driven all the bad guys out of Boston. Which is too bad because on his home ground, the tough and tender PI and Hawk, his trusty sidekick, don't need a gang of other guys to do their work. And the hired guns they round up to help them clean out a nest of ne'er-do-wells who have the desert town of Potshot, Arizona, terrified aren't nearly as amusing as, say, John Dortmunder's criminal colleagues in Donald Westlake's caper novels.
The thugs who populate the Dell, a scrubby little enclave just outside of town, have the locals in their pocket, which is why the pretty blonde who hires Spenser to find whoever killed her husband points him toward the Preacher, who rules the Dell and its denizens. But Spenser's not as certain as his client that Steve Buckman died at the Preacher's hands. As our hero and his ethnically diverse but politically incorrect henchmen (one gay shooter, one Latino, one black, one Native American--all that's missing is Annie Oakley) investigate, it turns out that Spenser's right, as usual. The action ranges from Las Vegas to L.A., Atlanta to New Mexico, but much of it is a humdrum travelogue as Spenser rounds up his gang from all over the country to take on the Preacher and his musclemen. While Potshot isn't one of Robert B. Parker's best, it's still not bad. The one or two lines devoted to introducing Spenser's backup buddies don't begin to do any of them justice, and there's a lot more description of the artillery the guys pack than usual. But they do fill up the white space, and when the action lags, there's always Susan's dirty talk, shopping jones, and dietary obsessions to divert the reader. There's a midlife crisis somewhere in this evergreen series that's just waiting to erupt. Whether it's Spenser's, Susan's, or Parker's, however, remains to be seen. --Jane Adams
From Booklist
Here's a real treat for fans of the long-running Spenser series: a sort of class reunion in which Spenser and all his favorite fellow tough guys get together to trade quips and bang a few heads. In a combination parody of and homage to
The Magnificent Seven, Spenser takes on the job of clearing out a gang of "mountain trash" who are intimidating the residents of Potshot, Arizona. Even the supremely resourceful Spenser needs a little help with this one, so he drafts six of his compadres from previous adventures. There's the imperial Hawk, of course, Spenser's costar throughout the series, but in addition, this rainbow coalition of right-thinking thugs includes Latino Chollo, Native American Bobby Horse, gay ex-cop Teddy Sapp, and lovable mobsters Vinnie Morris and Bernard J. Fortunato. Much of the fun here is in the pregame strategizing between the players, as the ever-sensitive Spenser tries to avoid as much bloodshed as possible, and his henchmen argue for the efficiency of a guns-blazing ambush. (The master of understatement, Hawk merely rolls his eyes at Spenser's tough-guy morality and mutters, "Being your faithful Afro-American companion ain't the easiest thing I've ever done.") In the end, of course, there's plenty of violence (as we knew there would be) but not so much as to keep the thugs from their horseplay, much of which involves delightfully deadpan commentary on one another's racial a