Promised Land: Spenser, Book 4
Written by Robert B. Parker
Narrated by Michael Prichard
3.5/5
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Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
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 -- and a very pretty quarter million bucks in real estate. Now a loan shark is putting on the bite. Spenser finds himself doing a slow burn in the Cape Cod sun. The wife has turned up as a hot suspect in a case of murder one...the in-hock hubby has 24 hours before the mob makes him dead...and suddenly Spenser is in so deep that the only way out is so risky it makes dying look like a sure thing.
"Spenser is the sassiest, funniest, most-enjoyable-to-read private eye around today." (The Cincinnati Post)
Robert B. Parker
Robert B Parker was the best-selling author of over 60 books, including Small Vices, Sudden Mischief, Hush Money, Hugger Mugger, Potshot, Widows Walk, Night Passage, Trouble in Paradise, Death in Paradise, Family Honor, Perish Twice, Shrink Rap, Stone Cold, Melancholy Baby, Back Story, Double Play, Bad Business, Cold Service, Sea Change, School Days and Blue Screen. He died in 2010 at the age of 77.
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Reviews for Promised Land
245 ratings11 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Continuing 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! - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I thought this was a very interesting Spenser book. The focus was more on feminism, midlife crises, crumbling marriages, and Spenser's fairly new relationship with Susan, than it was on crime or being a tough guy (though this was included toward the end, seemingly as an afterthought). It took place in the 70s, when i was born. I enjoyed seeing how men and women related to each other then and reading the 70s slang (though some of it was a little impenetrable). There were some errors in the Kindle edition, but it was still a good reading experience.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I recently decided to reread this Spenser, which I originally read in High School, in 1983 or 1984. This novel is the third or fourth in the series but should count as the first because Hawk is introduced and the whole Susan Silverman relationship comes into focus in a recognizable way (before becoming rote several novels later, perhaps after A Catskill Eagle). The dialogue is not as funny as later Spensers but this one has more heart than most of the later ones.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Neat story, macho characters and some witty dialogue paper over some of the more clunky philosophising.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Maybe happy, well-adjusted married people don't seek out private investigators or get involved with crazy women's liberation types. Spenser, with the help of Hawk and Susan Silverman, once again does the best he can to make things work out for his clients: Justice may be done, but legal crimes are not always punished.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Our smart-aleck hero of the one name survives his fourth outing. And this one marks the arrival of Spenser's other half/negative, Hawk, whom I assume is integral to the rest of the series being as Avery Brooks played him on the television show.The story's just fine, Spenser's drenched in enough booze and (monogamous) sex to stun Andre the Giant, yet he somehow manages to suture a couple of shady dealings together for everyone's benefit.What's most interesting about this one is that the novel is largely a conversation about masculinity--there's a feminista group a la the Black Panthers (the Pink Panthers?). What makes Spenser? Honor? Charm? Being a horse's ass?I honestly can't wait to read the next one.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fun to read. Some laughs. Easy to follow. Surprise last chapter.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Spenser was more judicious in his smart talk than most later attempted clones and I wasn't expecting him to come forth with well articulated feminist statements. I didn't enjoy the case or his solution to the mess associated with it, but it was readable and interesting.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Spencer series is fine entertainment.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Spenser is at his snarky best as he searches for a missing wife. His relationship with Hawk begins to really develop in this novel.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It is fun to go back in time with detective novels written decades ago. I loved reading about Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, published in 1939. I recently came across Robert B. Parker’s Promised Land, the fourth of his Spenser novels. (Parker wrote 40 Spenser novels, and 4 more were written posthumously by Ace Adkins.) Promised Land, an Edgar Award winner, was published in 1976, and it veritably reeks of the 70’s. Parker clads any character he doesn’t like in a leisure suit, with special attention to detail. He outfits the character he likes the least with a “Maroon-checked doubleknit leisure suit, white belt, white shoes, white silk shirt with the collar out over the lapels.” He has Spenser pick up the bar tab for 4 drinks at a fairly pricey watering hole by leaving a “ten spot,” which apparently includes a reasonably generous tip! Oh inflation. And he has the main characters drink gallon jugs of Gallo burgundy.Parker reproduces the patois of the 70’s as well. At one point Spenser says: “…You will get ripped off if you’re lucky and ripped off and busted if you’re not.” Ah, Spenser, master of the revolutionary argot. Word maven of the counterculture.Promised Land is significant for Parker fans because it introduces one of Parker’s most memorable characters, the inimitable “Hawk,” who is destined to appear in numerous later Spenser novels. In this one, Hawk is a minatory character who at one time beats up Spenser’s client, but thankfully chooses to refrain from killing Spenser and the client in the end.This novel also includes a good deal of philosophizing by Spenser on the importance of personal honor and what it is to be a good man. In addition, Spenser proposes marriage to Susan Silverman, who has not yet gone to Harvard and is still just a guidance counselor.Oh, and did I mention, the detective story [where Spenser is hired to find a wife who has disappeared, who turns up with some radical feminists who rob a bank and kill a guard] is pretty good in its own right.(JAB)