Promised Land

by Robert B. Parker

published

December 5th 1992 by Dell

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binding

Mass Market Paperback, 224 pages

characters

Spenser

literary awards

Edgar Award for Best Novel (1977)

isbn

0440171970 (isbn13: 9780440171973)

description

Spenser is good at finding things. But this time he has a client out on Cape Cod who is in over his head. Harvey Shepard has lost his pretty wife -- a...more

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Jen rated it:

03/29/08

bookshelves: detective-fiction, male-author

Read in March, 2008

In the fourth installment of the Spenser series, Spenser is hired to find a man's wife. When he finds her and discovers she doesn't want her husband to know where she is, Spenser obliges. But the case doesn't stop there. The husband is in trouble with a loan shark and the wife has taken up with some shady fanatical women. Spenser has to try to save them both. Hawk is introduced in this novel.

I absolutely LOVE Robert Parker's Spenser. He's a complex character with many conflicting chara...more In the fourth installment of the Spenser series, Spenser is hired to find a man's wife. When he finds her and discovers she doesn't want her husband to know where she is, Spenser obliges. But the case doesn't stop there. The husband is in trouble with a loan shark and the wife has taken up with some shady fanatical women. Spenser has to try to save them both. Hawk is introduced in this novel.

I absolutely LOVE Robert Parker's Spenser. He's a complex character with many conflicting characteristics. But the conflictions work. It's hard not to be endeared to his wit and determination to "do right."

The introduction of Hawk adds a new layer of complexity to Spenser's character as well. Hawk mentions to Susan that he and Spenser are more alike than she notices, and I think that's very true. Right down to the single names. When Spenser tells the police captain about Hawk, the captain wants to know what Hawk's full name is. Spenser says, "I don't know; just Hawk."

At one point in the novel Spenser says to Hawk, "Hawk, all this time I've known you I never could figure out why sometimes you talk like an account exec from Merrill Lynch and sometimes you talk like Br'er Bear." Hawk's response is, "Ah is the product of a ghetto education. Sometimes my heritage keep popping up." Besides the wit in both characters it struck me as mirroring Spenser's ability to "play dumb" when the need arises.

I continue to be in awe of Parker's magic with language. One of the points that it stood out the most for me in this novel was when Spenser makes the observation, "I don't know if I was scared or not, but Shepard was so scared his face didn't fit." I could have NEVER come up with that description, but when I read it, I could vividly see what Parker was talking about. I just couldn't help but smile at that sentence.

There were two reasons I didn't give this book five stars. Had I been able to use a half star option, this would have definitely been a 4 1/2 star rating. The reasons I didn't opt for five were 1.) I haven't figured out what Parker is doing with his punction yet. In a lot of the questions the characters ask, the sentence ends with a period, not a question mark. There were several instances where I had to go back and reread before I realized he was asking a question not making a statement. The other reason that kept me from five stars on this was the rationale for the women robbing the bank. Now, this may have more to do with when the book was published, but I at first thought it was a joke. However, no one seemed to find it as absurd as me, the reader. So, I wonder if it was a viable motive in 1976 when the book was published as opposed to today?

Regardless of these two minor points, I LOVED this book. Moving on to #5......less

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Nikki rated it:

08/14/08

bookshelves: edgar-best-novel-winners, fiction, mysteries, re-reads

Read in August, 2008

Continuing my project of reading all the Edgar Best Novel winners, or in some cases re-reading them, I'm up to 1977. It's taken about a year to cover 23 years of books, but of course I've read other things as well.

It has been some time since I read any of Robert B. Parker's Spenser novels, which I used to devour eagerly as soon as they appeared. I don't really know why I stopped reading them. But perhaps it's significant that, although I know I read PROMISED LAND soon after it appeared, I h...more Continuing my project of reading all the Edgar Best Novel winners, or in some cases re-reading them, I'm up to 1977. It's taken about a year to cover 23 years of books, but of course I've read other things as well.

It has been some time since I read any of Robert B. Parker's Spenser novels, which I used to devour eagerly as soon as they appeared. I don't really know why I stopped reading them. But perhaps it's significant that, although I know I read PROMISED LAND soon after it appeared, I had no memory of its plot at all. This is especially surprising since one of the major plot elements -- the radical feminist bankrobbers -- had many points in common with a real-life case involving two women I knew slightly in college, which had occurred in 1971, so one would think that would have stuck in my mind.

PROMISED LAND is neither a mystery nor a thriller. The only mystery -- where is the runaway wife Spenser's been hired to locate? -- is solved quite early in the book. Since it's a series book, we can be sure that Spenser will find a way to deal with all the bad guys. Parker was recently featured on the NPR series of interviews "Crime in the City" as the exemplar of a Boston setting. This book's setting, in Boston and Cape Cod, while well enough done, is nothing special in my opinion. One is led to the conclusion that it's the main characters -- Spenser, Susan Silverman, and Hawk -- who are the main attraction in Parker's books.

Perhaps Spenser made such a splash because he was, in some ways, a classic private eye -- full of wisecracks, but with an internal code of honor that he never breached -- a Philip Marlowe for the 70s? Yet, he was also an accomplished cook, took good care of himself, and was able to maintain a relationship with the equally complicated Susan Silverman -- not quite the loner with the empty refrigerator who had become a bit of a cliche by the early 70s.

Also, the books move fast. Parker does write in a way that keeps the pages turning.

I just have to say a word about Parker's descriptions of the clothing the characters are wearing. The reader really is aware that it's 1976 when men's leisure suits and overblown hairdos are described in such loving (and as far as I could tell, unironic) detail. If you remember wearing such things it will make you cringe! Even Spenser himself has a shirt with a long, pointed collar that he carefully arranges over the lapels of his sport coat. Just thinking of the polyesters who died to make the clothing is enough to make one weep! Oddly, the women's clothing is described as being relatively timeless, at least in this book.
When we were constant readers of the Spenser books, both my husband and I were very, very busy. We had small children, jobs, night classes, and bus commutes. Parker's novels were good ones to read on the bus, and his life of freedom combined with good food and drink (and sex with no kids) was a good escape. Now, we have more time to read a little more carefully and think about what we're reading, and Spenser no longer satisfies. Perhaps that's what was happening societally when this book won the Edgar -- we were all at a bit of a loss after Vietnam and Watergate, inflation and women's liberation were changing the ways our home lives played out -- Spenser's life looked pretty good. Men wanted to be Spenser, women wanted to be Susan Silverman, and hey -- there are still times I wish I had a buddy like Hawk!
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