Promised Land

Name: Promised Land
Author: Robert B. Parker

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 record

Time
An eveningA season
224 pages, about 4 hours: two-thirds the length of a typical book on the shelf.
Getting in
Walk right inSteep climb
Spenser moves his detective office, and then Harvey Shepard hires him to find his missing wife.
One of a kind
Others do thisNothing else does
Kirkus ranks Parker’s dialogue just below George V. Higgins, whose The Friends of Eddie Coyle is on the shelf at 192 pages.

The case for it

on the two cases
“the pieces stacking together neatly to form a whole”
a book blog
on the dialogue
“I was particularly drawn to Parker’s crisp dialogue”
Allison Brennan · Criminal Element, 2019
on meeting Hawk
“it’s just good to sit back and enjoy him”
five stars · a book blog
on Susan’s awakening
“there’s also a delicious awakening of Susan that drives home her ability to love Spenser”
a book blog

The case against

on Spenser’s musings
“these dialogues, and Spenser’s own musings, can occasionally come off as somewhat preachy”
a book blog
on the last half
“wasn’t really all that interested in the storyline, but that was mainly the last half”
three stars · a book blog
on the feminism
“made me uneasy in its resistance to feminism in a way that later books don’t”
Rohan Maitzen · Open Letters Monthly, 2016
on the case’s complexity
“Two cases in one, neither very complicated”
Kirkus Reviews, 1976