Today’s book: Potshot

I’m a big Robert B. Parker fan–I even read his crappy western Gunman’s Rhapsody–so of course I was eager to get to the latest Spenser novel, Potshot. In this volume, Spenser is asked to solve a murder the local police in the desert town of Potshot, Arizona, are ignoring and, while he’s at it, to clean out a gang that’s extorting protection money. He takes Hawk, of course, and rounds up a bunch of tough guys from past adventures/novels (Vinny, Tedy Sapp, Bernard J. Fortunato, Chollo, and Bobby Horse) to help him as the gang has about 40 tough guys of its own.

I enjoyed this one a lot, it is better than the last five novels Parker’s written. He does spend a lot of the ink on characterization and dialog and less effort on plot but after writing about these guys for all these years I understand. And there is enough plot to make it work. Oddly, Spenser spends very little time writing about the food, especially food preparation, which is usually a staple of his books; poetry features much larger here: “The grave’s a fine and private place,” I said, “but none I think do there embrace.”