— Mystery & Crime —
Promised Land
Robert B. Parker
— 1976 —
“
Spenser, the Boston private eye who cooks, quotes poetry, and won't compromise his ethics, helps a man find his missing wife and stumbles into feminist anger and organized crime.
Decide its fate
⚖The case for it
Hawk walks in for the first time here, an old boxing acquaintance now working muscle for a loan shark, and the scene where he and Spenser size each other up is what readers name first. Two cases that look separate, a husband in debt and a wife who has left, click together without being forced. The beach conversation where Spenser and Susan work out what commitment means to two people wary of second marriages is better than a genre book needs. Parker moves on dialogue and short scenes: it “reads smoother than a scotch in a clean glass.”
— the honest librarian
✕The case against
The women Pam Shepard falls in with are mouthpieces rather than people, which flattens an argument the book otherwise wants to take seriously, and Spenser’s narration undercuts her fast. The relationship-processing between Spenser and Susan stalls the case for long stretches, and the book is padded next to the leaner later novels. The second half deflates into a “dull denouement with not much action.” One critic reports “I didn’t like Spenser here at all.” For a reader who came for the case, “meeting Hawk was the one redeeming feature.”
— the honest librarian
4h
honest hours
6
sittings
beyond the verdict
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