PAST TENSE (John Marshall Tanner Mysteries)

Description

When police Lieutenant Charlie Sleet breaks into sudden acts of violence, San Francisco P.I. John Marshall Tanner must unearth the repressed memories that lie at the heart of his friend's corruption and vigilantism--and put an end to his killing.

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Unlike some series writers who hit their peak early and then coast on past triumphs for the next dozen books, Stephen Greenleaf goes from strength to strength, stretching the boundaries of the genre without giving up its traditional values. His detective, Marsh Tanner, grows and changes with each outing, keeping our interest alive. In his latest, Tanner has to deal with a nasty mixture of sexual abuse and the controversy surrounding recovered memory. Greenleaf brings it all home in a scene where Tanner is playing with his baby daughter. "I was having a wonderful time until it occurred to me that at some point it would become wrong. At some point putting her on my lap, or letting her flop on my belly, or tickling her ribs and itching her nose and playing piggy with her toes will be inappropriate and even harmful, at least in the view of some. How was I supposed to know when that time had come?" Past Tanners available in paperback include Beyond Blame, False Conception and Flesh Wounds.

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False Conception (John Marshall Tanner Mysteries)

Description

When San Francisco detective John Marshall Tanner is hired to do a background check on a prospective surrogate mother, the job seems simple enough. There are only two stipulations - the surrogate must not know the identity of the contracting parents, and the investigation must be completed in three days. With some misgivings, Tanner checks out Greta Hammond and gives her the all clear. Two days later, the embryo of Millicent and Stuart Colbert is implanted in her womb. Two months later Greta Hammond disappears. The Colberts think she has taken the fetus to barter in an extortion attempt. But days pass and no ransom request is made, no barter suggested. It soon seems clear that Greta learned the identity of the child's parents and immediately fled. But why? The answer takes Tanner deep into the secrets of the Colbert family, whose history includes both murder and incest and a bitter struggle for control of an immense fashion empire.

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Strawberry Sunday: A John Marshall Tanner Novel

Description

John Marshall Tanner is a reluctant survivor. Some days, as he lies in a hospital bed struggling to recuperate from a near-fatal gunshot wound, he figures life is hardly worth living.

One of the few people who can bring him out of his depression is young Rita Lombardi, in the hospital for surgery on a disfiguring birthmark and clubfeet. Rita and Tanner walk the halls together, pulling their IVs behind them, discussing the big and small issues of life: Rita's love for her friend Carlos and her passion for her special corner of the world -- the strawberry fields of California's Salinas Valley.

Rita has been around the strawberry industry since childhood, and she knows that strawberry picking is brutally hard work, and that only the landowners make money from it. In Mexico the fruit is called The Fruit of the Devil, perhaps not an inappropriate designation.

As Rita leaves the hospital for home, walking tall and straight for the first time in her life, she and Tanner pledge to stay in touch. She wants to show him her valley and the plight of the migrant workers, many of them illegals, who work so hard for so little.

But Rita never gets to welcome Tanner to her town of Haciendas. When Tanner recovers enough to call Rita, he receives some devastating news.

Rita is dead, murdered by an unknown assailant.

There will be no marriage with Carlos, no children, no daughter to comfort Rita's mother in her old age. There are rumors in town that Rita was no saint, she was a revolutionary. She wanted to organize a union in a place where unions were welcomed neither by the landowners nor the workers. Was that enough reason for somebody to want her dead? Or was the reason behind her murder more personal?

His guide is gone, but Tanner soon heads for Haciendas to see what he can learn. The San Francisco private investigator is working for free, and he'll stay as long as it takes. His client is Rita, and she's not around to pay.

Life goes on, however, and one of the pleasanter parts of Tanner's life is his give-and-take with attractive San Francisco Deputy D.A. Jill Coppelia, who wants to pick Tanner's brain on police corruption and perhaps investigate other parts of his body as well. Tanner's attracted to her, but he must be careful. And then there's the question of the bequest....

Strawberry Sunday thrusts author Stephen Greenleaf into the topical world of today's headlines, where he boldly showcases the best of his talent. As critics and readers have long known, John Marshall Tanner is broody and tough and vulnerable and altogether memorable, and Greenleaf is one of our great masters of detective fiction.

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Beyond Blame

Description

"Readers who like their private-eye novels witty, literate, and properly balanced between misanthropy and compassion will find Stephen Greenleaf's BEYOND BLAME exactly to taste."
NEWSWEEK
Psychologist Dianne Renzel has been brutally butchered in her own bed. The evidence points to her husband, Lawrence Usser, a brilliant law professor, whose speciality is the successful use of the insanity defense for a variety of unsavory clients.
Now Dianne's parents have hired Tanner to make sure Usser doesn't use his customary fancy legal footwork to skip the rap for his own wife's murder. But as Tanner digs into the case, assumption after assumption gives way to question after question, and soon it's nearly impossible to know who is guilty and who is beyond blame....

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Fatal Obsession

Description

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FLESH WOUNDS (A John Marshall Tanner mystery)

Description

"Marsh? It's Peggy." The words strike like lightning bolts into the life of John Marshall Tanner, reopening old wounds, rekindling old desires. The speaker is Peggy Nettleton, Tanner's former secretary and former lover, who left his life six years earlier in circumstances too painful to remember. Now Peggy lives in Seattle and is about to marry Ted Evans, a wealthy investment banker. But Peggy has a problem - Nina Evans, Ted's beautiful young daughter by a previous marriage, is missing. The young model has disappeared into Seattle's netherworld after posing for some nude photographs. Peggy's marriage can't go forward until Nina is found. Peggy calls on her old boss for help. From art galleries to strip clubs, from porn kings to computer wizards, Tanner trails Nina to her oppressor's lair. He will be tested as never before as he learns more than he cares to know about Peggy and the man to whom she is betrothed, and about the world of digital imagery and its capacity to generate electric evils.

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