What do you think?
Rate this book
John Marshall Tanner #1
Grave Error by Stephen Greenleaf
Contacted by the wife of noted and controversial consumer advocate Roland Nelson, San Francisco private eye John Marshall Tanner attempts to find out what Nelson's blackmailer had on the apparently incorruptible Nelson
Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
31 people are currently reading
147 people want to read
About the author
Stephen Greenleaf
31 books27 followersStephen Greenleaf got a B.A. from Carlton College in 1964 and a J.D. from the University of California at Berkely in 1967. Stephen Greenleaf served in the United States Army from 1967 through 1969, and was also admitted to the California Bar during that period, with subsequent numerous legal positions.
Stephen Greenleaf studied creative writing at the University of Iowa in 1978 and 1979, (the Iowa Writers Workshop) with the subsequent publication of his first Tanner novel in 1979. Mr. Greenleaf has written fourteen John Marshall Tanner books to date, with his latest being Ellipse. All the novels are situated in San Fransico, and Stephen Greenleaf also lives in northern California with his wife Ann.
Series:
* John Marshall Tanner Mystery
Stephen Greenleaf studied creative writing at the University of Iowa in 1978 and 1979, (the Iowa Writers Workshop) with the subsequent publication of his first Tanner novel in 1979. Mr. Greenleaf has written fourteen John Marshall Tanner books to date, with his latest being Ellipse. All the novels are situated in San Fransico, and Stephen Greenleaf also lives in northern California with his wife Ann.
Series:
* John Marshall Tanner Mystery
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
May 12, 2015
”I just wanted to get away from it, the curse that Oxtail had cast upon everyone who lived there. That was where the guilt lay, with the town, with the collective consciousness that twisted and bent and spoiled and soured the people who had grown up with it, breathing its vapors. But they don’t put towns in jail. They probably should, but they don’t.”
John Marshall Tanner has been asked to investigate the celebrity reporter Roland Nelson by his rather attractive wife. Private eyes love it when good looking women come into their office needing the kind of help only they can provide. Marsh is no exception, except he has been around the block long enough to know better than to have his head turned by a few curves and a pair of nicely turned calves.
It doesn’t take more than a couple of days to figure out that what the wife suspects is not the problem. There is certainly deception, but the strings fanning out from that determination are twisted and knotted. The story is larger, more convoluted, but Marsh is about to put the case behind him because finding out the whole truth isn’t always what his clients want. When his best friend Harry Spring is found lying dead in a ditch with a double tap to the back of his head in the town of Oxtail...well Marsh is back in the middle of all of it.
When he discovers that Spring was working for Clair Nelson, the daughter of Roland Nelson, he starts to realize that the case he is about to wrap up is far from over and some of those strings leading to the truth have been cut or should I say bludgeoned, shot, stabbed.
Oxtail is a farming community outside of San Francisco. A town full of unfriendly, inbred, distrustful, defeated people. I had flashes of Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) from the movie Chinatown running in those orange groves trying to escape the range of shotguns being triggered by rednecks. Between the oppressive heat and the cloying smell of rotting produce, Marsh is wrapped up in a blanket of smothering despondency.
”There was nothing pretty about the Oxtail link in the chain of commerce. Foods that would look delicate and tasty in a fine restaurant were ugly and misshapen and seemed vaguely carnivorous while lying in giant storage bins or open truck trailers. The streets were littered with rotting vegetables fallen from careening trucks and the air was sharp with the smell of overripe fruit, the smell of things well past their prime. Things like me.”
Unsolved deaths from the past are encroaching on the present, creating more confusion and more speculation about exactly what got Harry Spring killed. The wild card whom Marsh most wants to put a finger on is Al Rodman, the boyfriend of Claire Nelson, a known thug with a local syndicate in San Francisco. Rodman’s involvement with the Nelson’s and his connections to Oxtail make him a prime candidate for murder, but as bodies keep piling up, it becomes more and more apparent that this case is not one case, but a series of unresolved events each swathed in layers of duplicity.
And of course there is a woman, not just any woman, but a woman that makes a man think about settling down with babies and a white picket fence. He might even get a real job.
”The woman was introduced as Sara Brooke, Roland Nelson’s chief assistant. Many beautiful women don’t wear too well up close. The features that knock you out from across the room often become incongruous on close inspection: the hair is too stiff, the lips too thin, the nostrils too flared or too crimped. Sara Brooke had just the opposite effect. You probably wouldn’t pick her out of the crowd at a cocktail party, but if you found yourself sitting next to her on a bar stool you wouldn’t leave until she did.”
As the case unspools and Marsh doggedly chases down each fragment of truth adding new pieces to the puzzle in his head, he starts to realize that truth is truly stranger than fiction.
”I told it. The words poured out like salt and I listened to them with the detachment of a critic. They were rational words, academic and sterile, as if murder and blackmail and two decades of rage were as traditional as nursery rhymes.”
You would think when I lived in San Francisco I would have read a few Stephen Greenleaf novels,, but it took reading The Mexican Tree Duck by James Crumley to finally convince me that I have been missing out by not adding Greenleaf to my hardboiled reading resume. Crumley extolled the virtues of having a Greenleaf novel on a stakeout or anytime the doldrums needed to be chased away by a dose of Raymond Chandler through the pen of a disciple. There is no shortage of clipped hardnosed prose. "The guy looked like a hood, anyhow. Drove a big black Chrysler, had a kind of flat face, like his old lady had been frightened by a frying pan when he was in the womb.”
The plot is an intricate, tangled mess that does straighten out as Marsh starts to make sense of the nonsensical. I even found myself exclaiming “No Way” after one such revelation. I must confess I do talk to my books from time to time. :-) This book is a classic example of a 1970s ode to Chandler.
See more of my writing at http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
You can like my blog page on Facebook here. JeffreyKeeten Blog page
I bought this book from Canford Book Corral located in Freeville, New York.
John Marshall Tanner has been asked to investigate the celebrity reporter Roland Nelson by his rather attractive wife. Private eyes love it when good looking women come into their office needing the kind of help only they can provide. Marsh is no exception, except he has been around the block long enough to know better than to have his head turned by a few curves and a pair of nicely turned calves.
It doesn’t take more than a couple of days to figure out that what the wife suspects is not the problem. There is certainly deception, but the strings fanning out from that determination are twisted and knotted. The story is larger, more convoluted, but Marsh is about to put the case behind him because finding out the whole truth isn’t always what his clients want. When his best friend Harry Spring is found lying dead in a ditch with a double tap to the back of his head in the town of Oxtail...well Marsh is back in the middle of all of it.
When he discovers that Spring was working for Clair Nelson, the daughter of Roland Nelson, he starts to realize that the case he is about to wrap up is far from over and some of those strings leading to the truth have been cut or should I say bludgeoned, shot, stabbed.
Oxtail is a farming community outside of San Francisco. A town full of unfriendly, inbred, distrustful, defeated people. I had flashes of Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) from the movie Chinatown running in those orange groves trying to escape the range of shotguns being triggered by rednecks. Between the oppressive heat and the cloying smell of rotting produce, Marsh is wrapped up in a blanket of smothering despondency.
”There was nothing pretty about the Oxtail link in the chain of commerce. Foods that would look delicate and tasty in a fine restaurant were ugly and misshapen and seemed vaguely carnivorous while lying in giant storage bins or open truck trailers. The streets were littered with rotting vegetables fallen from careening trucks and the air was sharp with the smell of overripe fruit, the smell of things well past their prime. Things like me.”
Unsolved deaths from the past are encroaching on the present, creating more confusion and more speculation about exactly what got Harry Spring killed. The wild card whom Marsh most wants to put a finger on is Al Rodman, the boyfriend of Claire Nelson, a known thug with a local syndicate in San Francisco. Rodman’s involvement with the Nelson’s and his connections to Oxtail make him a prime candidate for murder, but as bodies keep piling up, it becomes more and more apparent that this case is not one case, but a series of unresolved events each swathed in layers of duplicity.
And of course there is a woman, not just any woman, but a woman that makes a man think about settling down with babies and a white picket fence. He might even get a real job.
”The woman was introduced as Sara Brooke, Roland Nelson’s chief assistant. Many beautiful women don’t wear too well up close. The features that knock you out from across the room often become incongruous on close inspection: the hair is too stiff, the lips too thin, the nostrils too flared or too crimped. Sara Brooke had just the opposite effect. You probably wouldn’t pick her out of the crowd at a cocktail party, but if you found yourself sitting next to her on a bar stool you wouldn’t leave until she did.”
As the case unspools and Marsh doggedly chases down each fragment of truth adding new pieces to the puzzle in his head, he starts to realize that truth is truly stranger than fiction.
”I told it. The words poured out like salt and I listened to them with the detachment of a critic. They were rational words, academic and sterile, as if murder and blackmail and two decades of rage were as traditional as nursery rhymes.”
You would think when I lived in San Francisco I would have read a few Stephen Greenleaf novels,, but it took reading The Mexican Tree Duck by James Crumley to finally convince me that I have been missing out by not adding Greenleaf to my hardboiled reading resume. Crumley extolled the virtues of having a Greenleaf novel on a stakeout or anytime the doldrums needed to be chased away by a dose of Raymond Chandler through the pen of a disciple. There is no shortage of clipped hardnosed prose. "The guy looked like a hood, anyhow. Drove a big black Chrysler, had a kind of flat face, like his old lady had been frightened by a frying pan when he was in the womb.”
The plot is an intricate, tangled mess that does straighten out as Marsh starts to make sense of the nonsensical. I even found myself exclaiming “No Way” after one such revelation. I must confess I do talk to my books from time to time. :-) This book is a classic example of a 1970s ode to Chandler.
See more of my writing at http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
You can like my blog page on Facebook here. JeffreyKeeten Blog page
I bought this book from Canford Book Corral located in Freeville, New York.
December 30, 2019
In this first adventure of detective John Marshall Tanner—who is a member of the bar in good standing, but who chooses to be a private investigator—our hero is hired by the wife of Roland Nelson (sort of a burly although equally stuffy Ralph Nader) to discover the reason for her husband’s brief disappearance. Who was he with? Where did he go? Tanner answers these questions easily, but whos and wheres lead quickly to whys. Why did Nelson’s adopted daughter Claire hire Tanner’s old friend Harry Spring? And why does detective Spring end up dead in a two-bit town? From then on, the “whys” have it. In spades. To solve the murder of his friend Harry, John Marshall Tanner embarks on bloody and tortuous hunt into the past of Oxtail, California.
This is Greenleaf’s first novel, and it is a good thing I still have positive memories of his later books, from forty years ago, because the first few chapter are so bad I nearly stopped reading right away. Here’s a passage from the second chapter that I picked, literally at random, in which Tanner describes Roland Nelson’s wife, Jacqueline Nelson:
She filled her blue knit dress the way a miser fills his coffers. The strand of pearls around her neck shone like stars on a newly sewn flag. A thatch of auburn hair angled across her forehead and disappeared behind her ear. The tiny gold turtle pinned over her left breast was as smug as Governor Brown.Bad isn’t it? But it gets worse. A few pages later, another woman is described:
Her white blouse was as stiff as linoleum. The skin at her wrists and ankles was as brown and smooth as a well-licked cone.Chandleresque metaphors, certainly. But Chandleresque metaphors devoid of grace, aptness, or wit.
My patience, though, was rewarded. Once the plot gets going—a quarter of the way into the book—he puts aside all the inept metaphors, and concentrates on telling a tale. And a good tale it is too, the sort Ross Macdonald often told, with an unsolved crime in the long dead past stretching its bloody tentacles into the present, searching for further victims. The ending as a little too drawn out for my taste, but—until then—I found the story thoroughly absorbing.
I’m going to read more Tanner. He’s an excellent writer. Now that he’s got that metaphor thing under control.
April 6, 2010
We stuttered our way down Nineteenth Avenue, wasting brakes and tires and gas and time. After ten minutes of that we turned east on Kennedy Drive and wound through Golden Gate Park. The park serves as a conduit for the evening fog, sucks it in from the ocean like a giant vacuum cleaner, and as I drove along the road the steamy clouds slipped reluctantly away from the hood of my car like the fingers of a drowning man.
It was dark in the park, as dark as despair. There were people in there doing everything from making love to plotting murder. I turned on my heater and drove a little faster.
Synopsis: Hard-boiled SF PI John Marshall Tanner is hired by the wife of a famous consumer crusader to find out why her husband's acting so weird. Tanner finds out, and a ton of people die.
The other twenty percent? Not so much.
Jacqueline Nelson hires herself a PI to find out why her husband Roland, head of a notoriously successful consumer group called The Institute, has started acting strangely. First he disappeared for a week, now he's trying to forbid their 20-year-old daughter from marrying the much older, possibly mafia-connected man she's fallen for. So Tanner starts investigating, and the more he investigates, the more he uncovers a tightly spiraled conspiracy that leads to a small, spoiled town in Central California, and events that happened more than twenty years ago.
The plot from there follows a fairly standard route: the more Tanner digs, the more people die, he's suspected of several murders, he picks fights with the small-town lawmen and nearly every gal in the plot flings herself at him, legs spread.
The thing of it is that for 180 pages, this totally works. It's a hard-boiled 70s noir potboiler, with lovely crackly language ("A grandfather clock subdivided the silence and offered it cheap.", "A cloud of dust billowed around us and became a train of brown chiffon as we left the pavement and the city that went with it.") and multidimensional characters, as well as vast unpicked fields of ripe California placeporn. And I do so love me some placeporn.
But then things go horribly wrong, like the author realized the deadline was next week and the gas bill hadn't been paid and wrote hellbent for leather, resulting in a last quarter of the book that's both improbable and insulting.
***SPOILERS***
So, denouement time. Everything's falling into place for our hero. He's figured out why Roland's acting weird, and that whole bit makes sense and is very well-plotted. But then! It turns out that Roland did not commit any of the murders. Okay, I am still with you. The very obvious murderer, who did everything except sing a peppy little showtune called "I Did It!" throughout the book, turns out to have only killed one person, and it was twenty years ago. Instead, he's running round starting fires and shooting at people as a blind for the real murderer, who Tanner deduces by a comparing two handwriting samples and noticing the similarities.
BUT BUT BUT. He does this offscreen, and then casually mentions it to the reader as he's climbing the stairs to the final confrontation.
I call bullshit the first.
Bullshit the second! The wife hired Tanner to find out why her husband was acting weird while she was blackmailing the tar out of him. And yet we are supposed to believe this same woman engineered a twenty-plus year plot and controlled five people's lives for most of those years, enacting a revenge that was going to take like, fifty years to complete, and out of the blue, she brings a PI in on it, to figure out what's wrong with her husband.
Now, I'm no expert on these things, but I'm gonna go out on a limb here and suggest maybe what was wrong with your husband, lady, was that you were blackmailing the tar out of him and holding his daughter hostage to boot. Just a thought. First thing off the top of my head. I don't know.
Bullshit the third! Completely gratuitous incest. Do not want. It didn't even make sense, in this huge intricate, very very complicated backstory.
But wait, there's more! It's not just the Obvious Murderer and the wife running round offing people. Oh no. It's also the husband and the girlfriend killing people. Fancy that! A case with four homicidal maniacs all in close proximity to one another and all of them entirely unaware of all the killing everyone else is doing.
Well thank goodness for Tanner. He likely lowered the crime rate in Central California by a double-digit percentage just on this one case alone. Hallelujiah!
And bullshit.
Plus there's a really gross attempted seduction and on top of it, the age-old cherry of a murderer who is kindly allowed to avoid justice by offing herself.
I'm not even going to mention a big ole deus ex machina that gets the PI out of being killed. Let's just not even go there.
*** END SPOILERS***
So while the ending is ultimately disappointing, gross and very very weird, the book as a whole was really enjoyable. Which I know, makes very little sense.
Blame it on the placeporn.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 10, 2017
PROTAGONIST: PI John Marshall Tanner
SETTING: San Francisco
SERIES: #1 of 14
RATING: 4.0
WHY: PI John Marshall Tanner is hired by Jacqueline Nelson because her husband, consumer advocate Roland, is acting suspiciously. She doesn’t really care about what he’s done but is more concerned that it will harm his image. Unbeknownst to them, the daughter, Claire, has hired Tanner’s friend, PI Harry Spring, to investigate another matter. When Harry is murdered, Tanner puts the Nelson case on hold to look into what happened to his friend. The book is marvelously written until the end. At that point, Greenleaf tries too hard to come up with a twisty conclusion and loses control of the narrative. The result, in my opinion, is implausible and over the top. First book-it is? At any rate, I will be reading the second in this series. Greenleaf writes too well for me to give up on him quickly.
SETTING: San Francisco
SERIES: #1 of 14
RATING: 4.0
WHY: PI John Marshall Tanner is hired by Jacqueline Nelson because her husband, consumer advocate Roland, is acting suspiciously. She doesn’t really care about what he’s done but is more concerned that it will harm his image. Unbeknownst to them, the daughter, Claire, has hired Tanner’s friend, PI Harry Spring, to investigate another matter. When Harry is murdered, Tanner puts the Nelson case on hold to look into what happened to his friend. The book is marvelously written until the end. At that point, Greenleaf tries too hard to come up with a twisty conclusion and loses control of the narrative. The result, in my opinion, is implausible and over the top. First book-it is? At any rate, I will be reading the second in this series. Greenleaf writes too well for me to give up on him quickly.
March 21, 2023
Fantastic work. Set in San Francisco and environs in the late 1970s, with an excellent mc. One of the best detective novels I’ve read in many years. Looking forward to reading this entire series.
February 18, 2013
Having read and enjoyed several other titles in the Tanner series, I decided to read all of them in order. This is the first, and we learn what happened to Harry Spring early on. If you like Ross MacDonald you will very much like this series. I'm devouring all of them. The writing is good as are the plots as Tanner peels aware the layers of corruption hidden in family histories.
Roland Nelson, an extremely well-known consumer advocate, disappeared for a week, has begin smoking again, and is very nervous about something. His wife wants to know why and hires John Marshall Tanner to find out what's going on in this. Turns out his investigation crosses paths with that of Harry Spring, his friend and colleague, who had been hired by Nelson's daughter to locate her biological parents. Lots of surprises.
Good interview with the author at http://www.mysteryfile.com/Greenleaf/....
Roland Nelson, an extremely well-known consumer advocate, disappeared for a week, has begin smoking again, and is very nervous about something. His wife wants to know why and hires John Marshall Tanner to find out what's going on in this. Turns out his investigation crosses paths with that of Harry Spring, his friend and colleague, who had been hired by Nelson's daughter to locate her biological parents. Lots of surprises.
Good interview with the author at http://www.mysteryfile.com/Greenleaf/....
April 24, 2016
Grab this marvelously well written hard boiled detective tale by one of our lesser known but nevertheless remarkable mystery writers.
John Marshall Tanner is a lawyer, though no longer practicing until, that is, an over the hill, good old boy judge retires, and has turned his talents to being a private detective.
Hired by the wife of a Ralph Nader sort of crusader to discover why her husband had been so different recently and why he was missing for a week or so, Tanner starts to uncover a 20 year old murder when another detective, Tanner’s good friend and mentor, is found murdered in a ditch. Then he turns his attention to find his friend’s killer.
What happens next? Tanner begins to unravel a series of hidden motives that turn and turn again toward the small down and out town where that long ago killing occurred.
Jump on this baby – the plot’s involved, easy to follow, and the writing is like eating out at your favorite restaurant.
John Marshall Tanner is a lawyer, though no longer practicing until, that is, an over the hill, good old boy judge retires, and has turned his talents to being a private detective.
Hired by the wife of a Ralph Nader sort of crusader to discover why her husband had been so different recently and why he was missing for a week or so, Tanner starts to uncover a 20 year old murder when another detective, Tanner’s good friend and mentor, is found murdered in a ditch. Then he turns his attention to find his friend’s killer.
What happens next? Tanner begins to unravel a series of hidden motives that turn and turn again toward the small down and out town where that long ago killing occurred.
Jump on this baby – the plot’s involved, easy to follow, and the writing is like eating out at your favorite restaurant.
August 12, 2018
Great read for a first of a series character in the Hammett Chandler tradition. Has a hard edge and sense of place some of the others lack. It make me want to read more.
February 2, 2021
"Most hideous crimes are committed by ... people who have spent their lives standing outside the candy store, looking through the window and licking their lips at all the goodies inside ... but always being shouldered aside to let other kids in the door. A lot of self-loathing and antagonism builds up during that kind of existence, and it's an explosive mixture. Once in a while a spark sets it off."
'Grave Error', first published in 1979, is a P.I. tale in the classic tradition of Chandler and Hammett, complete with beautiful dames and a layered mystery.
John Marshall Tanner, former attorney (that side story is one of the better in the book), now working as a P.I. in San Francisco is hired by the wife of prominent consumer advocate to find out why he has been behaving strangely.
Then he is asked by their adopted daughter to find out why another P.I., an old friend of Tanner's, has dropped off the map after she hired him to find her birth parents.
It all works itself out in a fairly leisurely fashion until the end when bombshells are dropped at a fast rate.
There is nothing new in 'Grave Error', and it is somewhat dated, but if you are a fan of this type of crime writing (as I am) you will not be disappointed.
'Grave Error', first published in 1979, is a P.I. tale in the classic tradition of Chandler and Hammett, complete with beautiful dames and a layered mystery.
John Marshall Tanner, former attorney (that side story is one of the better in the book), now working as a P.I. in San Francisco is hired by the wife of prominent consumer advocate to find out why he has been behaving strangely.
Then he is asked by their adopted daughter to find out why another P.I., an old friend of Tanner's, has dropped off the map after she hired him to find her birth parents.
It all works itself out in a fairly leisurely fashion until the end when bombshells are dropped at a fast rate.
There is nothing new in 'Grave Error', and it is somewhat dated, but if you are a fan of this type of crime writing (as I am) you will not be disappointed.
February 15, 2018
The first of 14 John "Marsh" Tanner cases (1979)
I'm a big fan of 'ol school hardboiled writing, and this fits the genre really nicely.
Taking place in San Francisco and outskirts, I was taken back there in the late '70's, and enjoyed the ride. Will continue with what looks to be a great series.
I'm a big fan of 'ol school hardboiled writing, and this fits the genre really nicely.
Taking place in San Francisco and outskirts, I was taken back there in the late '70's, and enjoyed the ride. Will continue with what looks to be a great series.
August 22, 2020
Greenleaf's first John Marshall Tanner mystery and it and he and Tanner all caught me good. This one targets the then nascent consumerism industry, Nadar-like glory and gotchas. Read all of the Tanner series, doesn't matter the order because they're all good -- the first time, and as good an unbelievable 40 years later.
November 4, 2020
Wow! This P.I. novel is an amazing read full of dangerous secrets, sordid places, and damaged, desperate people. The story is fast-paced and full of twists. The traumas of the past simply won’t stay buried. But the best thing about this book is the writing - spare and poetic. If you like Lew Archer or Spenser or Philip Marlowe, you should try John Marshall Tanner.
August 18, 2023
Greenleaf's prose evokes Chandler and Ross MacDonald. 3/4 of the novel is intriguing and with solid character development. The last 1/4 uncovers a bleak tragedy riddled repugnant smuttiness and misery. If this had been the first John Marshall book I'd read, I would not be racing to read others. However, I've read a few later in the series and found them impressive.
September 22, 2025
When a dude finds a clue that leads to another clue in a labyrinthian plot that ends miserably for all? I love that shit.
(This one is clearly a first effort, but a promising one. It's slow to begin, some awkward similes, and people acting as plot contrivances too often but it also has an insane, operatic and overblown climax that is very fun and outrageous to read)
(This one is clearly a first effort, but a promising one. It's slow to begin, some awkward similes, and people acting as plot contrivances too often but it also has an insane, operatic and overblown climax that is very fun and outrageous to read)
October 5, 2020
Definitely a page turner and well written, though the reveal felt a bit contrived and cliche (then again this book was written 40 years ago). Super dark and gritty by the end, too.
February 11, 2024
Masterpiece. Up there with all the greats of its genre.
July 16, 2014
Grave Error suffers from many of the decadent, Chandler-inspired 1970s detective novel cliches, right down to the seemingly mandatory incestuous themes, both figurative and literal, and cringe-worthy similes. Nevertheless, the novel's tone and atmosphere keep it together.
I appreciate that most of the central characters start out likable, but given that this is detective fiction, the likelihood they all end that way isn't too high.
I appreciate that most of the central characters start out likable, but given that this is detective fiction, the likelihood they all end that way isn't too high.
May 30, 2015
I read this years ago, and am now rereading all Greenleaf's books. Truly am surprised that they haven't become classics. Some of the descriptions stay with you and resonate. Sometimes, looking for a good book, I run into a batch of shallow depressingly boring stories. Then, I reread some of my favorites just to remind myself how a good book should feel.
Thank you Mr. Greenleaf. I read some of your stories to my husband who also likes your style.
Thank you Mr. Greenleaf. I read some of your stories to my husband who also likes your style.
February 21, 2016
I read this book on the new My Must Reads app that allows you to patronize your local bookstore when purchasing e-books and digital audiobooks.
I had forgotten about Stephen Greenleaf. He writes great hardboiled detective novels following the genre format to a "t"...complete with the financially struggling detective and the beautiful client with the great pair of gams who shows up unbidden at his office door. Yes, read this if you like the genre as I do.
I had forgotten about Stephen Greenleaf. He writes great hardboiled detective novels following the genre format to a "t"...complete with the financially struggling detective and the beautiful client with the great pair of gams who shows up unbidden at his office door. Yes, read this if you like the genre as I do.
October 25, 2021
First in a series and it shows. Only if you're a real fan.
Personally very interesting for the background. It was written in 1979 and set in San Francisco. In 1979 I was at UC Berkeley and I was living in the city by 1985, so it was interesting to read and see how much has changed culturally (smoking!) and technologically, and also to see what has stayed the same.
Personally very interesting for the background. It was written in 1979 and set in San Francisco. In 1979 I was at UC Berkeley and I was living in the city by 1985, so it was interesting to read and see how much has changed culturally (smoking!) and technologically, and also to see what has stayed the same.
December 12, 2009
An ok exemplar of the California private eye novel and a not bad beginning for a series. However, contrary to what one might expect this book, there are more than 5 people from San Francisco, and most of them don't hail from Oxtail, CA.
May 29, 2017
The owner of a bookstore recommended this author to me as being comparable to the Ross Macdonald series. Maybe that's why they went out of business. At least I bought it in paperback.
December 23, 2013
Another 100% reliable series. Greenleaf is Pronzini with a few more adjectives.
Read
April 27, 2014Need to do a full review of this some time. I was about 14 when I last read this, and it had a different cover!
October 5, 2014
The John Marshall Tanner series is old detective writing at its best!
June 29, 2019
Chandler homage. Twisty.
December 2, 2013
Thought I had it figured out, but I didn't. A good read.
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews