Promised Land (1976) by Robert Parker

1001 Novels: A Library of America

Promised Land (1976)

by Robert Parker

Cape Cod, Massachusetts

Massachusetts: 14/30

   This is the fourth book in the series of detective novels that spawned the famous Spenser for Hire television show.  It's amazing how ubiquitous prime-time television was in its heyday.  I never watched an episode but I still remembered that Robert Urich played Spencer.  I had no idea that the show was set in Boston.   I listened to the Audiobook, which was a pretty low rent affair, not that a detective novel from 1975 requires narrative fire-works.  Parker wrote 40 Spenser novels before he died in 2010.  If it is not clear already, a detective novel is a welcome change from the sad families and single women that have absolutely dominated the Massachusetts portion of the 1001 Novels: A Library of America list.  Je-sus.

  Besides never watching the show, I'd never read a Robert Parker book before this Promised Land.  As the fourth book of forty, Spenser and his various attributes have already been set up- the weird relationship with his Jewish girlfriend is in place, and he's working as a private investigator.  It was actually this exact book that served as the pilot episode for the television show, and it also happens to be the first book with Hawk, who I think goes on to become his African-American sidekick- maybe I'm wrong about the relationship.  In Promised Land Hawk is a hired gun working for the bad guys, though with a code of honor that mirrors Spenser's own. 

  The character of Spenser is a private investigator for the 1970's- he cooks, he can talk intelligently about emotions and relationships, and he is actively anti-racist- calling out his employer when he uses the N-word to describe Hawk (who has just beaten him up a little bit).  The gig involves Spenser being hired by a Cape Cod area business man to track down his wayward wife- who has left because he loves her "too much".   She falls in with a nascent group of radical feminists who end up murdering a bank guard during a robbery(!).  Spenser then has to bail out both the wayward wife and his original client, the husband, who is in deep to a loan shark for a real estate deal gone south.

  I didn't love it as a detective novel but as a BOSTON detective novel it was great and like I said, it was a welcome relief from the parade of YA teen girl coming-of-age novels, sad single women and sad family women that have populated this part of the 1001 Novels List.   I'm sitting here looking at a stack of four more- including two that I tried as Audiobooks but couldn't bear in that form.