ABOUT THE BOOK
A Spenser Mystery
Boston PI Spenser returns - heading west to the rich man's haven of Potshot, Arizona, a former mining town reborn as a paradise for Los Angeles millionaires looking for a place to escape the pressures of their high-flying lifestyles. Potshot overcame its rough reputation as a rendezvous for old-time mountain men who lived off the land, thanks to a healthy infusion of new blood and even newer money. But when this western idyll is threatened by a local gang - a twenty-first-century posse of desert rats, misfits, drunks and scavengers - the local police seem powerless.
Led by a charismatic individual known only as The Preacher, this motley band of thieves selectively exploits the town, nurturing it as a source of wealth while systematically robbing the residents blind.
Enter Spenser, called in to put the group out of business and establish a police force who can protect the town. Calling on his own cadre of cohorts, including Vinnie Morris, Bobby Horse, Chollo Bernard J. Fortunato, as well as the redoubtable Hawk, Spenser must find a way to beat the gang at their own dangerous game.
"...This is Parker's best for a long while, with an ingenious solution and an ominous ending..." - Gerald Kaufman, The Scotsman [read the full review]
Superb in its apparently simple style, is Robert B Parker's Potshot (No Exit Press, £6.99). Parker's Boston-based private eye, Spenser, goes to Arizona to investigate a killing and save the town from a gang of menacing bounty men. Spenser has reached the stage in his career when he delightedly annoys all who encounter him (except for his ghastly girl-friend, Susan, whose overdue sadistic murder would be more than welcome) because of his smugness and arrogance.
But he gets the job done, and sorts out mysteries that his clients would prefer not to be uncovered. This is Parker's best for a long while, with an ingenious solution and an ominous ending. Readers wanting to challenge Parker in fathoming the mystery should think of the movie Chinatown
"...Parker packs more meaning into a whispered "yeah" than most writers can pack into a page......" - The Sunday Times
"...if [Parker] expects applause, he's got it coming. In an age of shifty heroes with shaky values, he has created a hero who can still stand up for himself..." - Marilyn Stasio, New York Times [read the full review]
Sometimes you have to wonder how Robert B. Parker keeps his mojo working. It can't be easy, year after year, sending his aging knight of a private eye, Spenser, into a cynical world that distrusts heroes and barely pays lip service to the romantic code of honor he lives by. There is a trick to keeping the faith with an old hero without letting him slip into redundancy, or worse, self-parody, and in ''Potshot,'' his 28th novel in the series, Parker shows us exactly how he does it.
On the most essential level, Parker still believes in Spenser, which means that he's not going to force his beefy but courtly sleuth to compromise his values or drastically change his style. When a comely widow asks him to go out to Potshot, Ariz., and inflict his tough brand of justice on the gang of desert rats who killed her husband and are terrorizing her town, you know that he is not going to refer her to the state police or the office of the attorney general — although that would be the smart thing to do. He's going to take the case and, even when it looks hopeless, he's going to honor his word. As he tells his ladylove, Susan Silverman: ''If I don't do what I say I'll do, in a little while I'll be out of business. Because doing what I say I'll do is pretty much what I have to sell.''
At the same time, Parker isn't afraid to give Spenser some measure of self-awareness. He knows that he's a hero and he knows that his heroics are a bit showy, and if he's not about to tone down the manly feats of strength, he's not above poking a little fun at his own legend. When the half-dozen soldiers of fortune he has recruited to help him clean up Potshot find out they are going up against 30 or 40 bad guys in a remote and heavily fortified desert camp, Spenser reminds them that he will be leading the charge, ''which really makes it 17,'' he points out, because, ''as you know, my strength is as the strength of 10.''
Rounding up this posse of urban gunslingers — all hard-bitten veterans of previous Spenser novels — was pure inspiration on Parker's part, because another shrewd way of keeping a sleuth in shape over the long haul is to guarantee that he has some fun. There's Bernard J. Fortunato, ''that tough little dude from Vegas,'' and Tedy Sapp, ''the hard case from Atlanta,'' as well as Vinnie Morris, Spenser's candidate for ''the best shooter I'd ever seen,'' and Chollo and Bobby Horse, the California talent. When Spenser outlines the nature of the assignment, Chollo wants to make sure he's got it straight: ''Clean up the criminal element? We are the criminal element.'' The moral ambiguity, of course, is what makes this crusade so outrageously entertaining.
This is not the first time that Spenser has teamed up with the bad guys. Mostly he borrows mob muscle from organized crime bosses like Vincent del Rio, who previously lent out Chollo in ''Thin Air'' (1995). Because he is always good for his debts, Spenser will also help out a mobster like Gino Fish (from whom Vinnie Morris is currently on loan), as he did when the mob boss's son-in-law skipped out on his family and ran off to Las Vegas in ''Chance'' (1996). Although these criminal alliances buff up Spenser's mystique as a hard guy, they don't stop him from being a fair guy — as he proves when he holds off the big showdown in Potshot until he can re-examine the fishy-looking evidence against the local gang.
The gunslingers are not pleased to be deflected from mowing down everyone in sight, but, one by one, they come around to accepting Hawk's assessment of Spenser's quirky moral code: ''It's not crazy. It's what makes him different... The rest of us, we see something that needs to be done, we do it. We don't much care how we do it. Spenser thinks that how you do it is as important as what you do.'' Parker once defined Spenser's code as ''a commitment to honorable behavior'' in which ''one's goodness is tested in physical success and some kind of violent circumstances.''
Parker also seems to be reveling in his own literary legend, by herding so many memorable characters from past novels to remind us of some of the finest chapters in his career. Well, — and us.
"...Parker continues to amaze and delight, demonstrating with Potshot that he can continue to keep a veteran character fresh and relevant for new and old readers alike ..." - Joe Hartlaub, Bookreporter.com [read the full review]
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