" I first read this Spenser novel about eight years after it first appeared, when the SDS, the Black Panthers, and Patty Hearst were memories, but only recent ones. At that time, author Parker's tale of loan sharks and self-taught women revolutionaries seemed like fiction snatched from the headlines. Revisiting it in 2010, I see the book's limitations: its stereotypes, its overlong conversations about morality and motives and emotion. But I also see how well it was constructed, and how Parker was gradually building up personalities for characters who were all but ciphers in the three earlier books. Promised Land marks the debut of the sinister anti-Spenser figure Hawk. The producers of the Spenser for Hire TV series that ran for several years in the 1980s used it as the basis for the show's pilot. "
— Kathy, 2/5/2014