Back on his family farm, John Marshall Tanner investigates a murder that hits very close to home
It's been thirty years since John Marshall Tanner, private eye, returned to Chaldea, and he hasn't missed the farm--three hundred acres of thin topsoil and ratty growth--any more than he's missed his family. There's his sister, Gail, worn down by decades of trying to do the right thing; his brother Curt, wallowing in depression ever since his son, Billy, came back broken from Vietnam; and his other brother, Matt, in debt up to his eyeballs and trying desperately to hang on to his new wife. As the family convenes to discuss selling the farm, tensions run high--and tragedy looms on the horizon.
When Billy is found hanging in a public park, the family dismisses it as suicide. But our protagonist knows murder when he sees it, and he is determined to learn what happened to the dead boy, no matter the cost to his family.
Fatal Obsession is the 4th book in the John Marshall Tanner Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
Stephen 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.
First time in the series, the setting is not in San Francisco. Marsh heads back to the Midwest, where he grew up. There to help settle questions on the family farm, he finds another reason that he has to investigate. This is one of my favorites series that came out some 40 years ago. Good stuff.
Fatal Obsession is the fourth book in Stephen Greenleaf's John Marshall Tanner series. Unfortunately it doesn't stand up to the quality of the first three in the series.
I discovered this series fairly recently and was so taken with the first book I read (which was actually the second in the series - Death Bed) that I immediately began reading the others in order. The first three books are exceptional. Great hard-boiled stories with witty dialogue and thoughtful insights into all kinds of human behavior and social conditions.
In John Marshall "Marsh" Tanner you have the cynical, somewhat anti-social PI with just a hint - a very, very slight glimmer - of hope for humanity. At his best Stephen Greenleaf calls to mind a combination of some of the qualities of Ross MacDonald and Raymond Chandler.
This book, far from being his best, is... okay.
Part of the blame rests squarely on the shoulders of the reader. I came in with high expectations because of my previous experiences with the author's work and I was deeply disappointed.
Fatal Obsession is slow to start... no, I mean S-L-O-W.
At least half of the book is taken up with our hero Marsh Tanner wandering through his Iowa hometown thinking about all the used-to-be and might-have-been scenarios that generally go along with a mid-life crisis - a great start for a book about middle-aged angst, missed opportunities and existential questions of life - not the most compelling start for a mystery/crime novel.
As the story proceeds and things start to actually happen it gets better but the ending is so contrived and muddled that the whole thing just didn't really work for me at all. If this had been the first book in this series I had read I probably wouldn't have read any of the others.
If it were another author I might give it 3 and 1/2 stars, coming from Mr. Greenleaf - knowing what he is capable of with this character and this series - it's a stretch to give it three stars.
If you've never read anything by Stephen Greenleaf do NOT start with this book. I would go so far as to say you could probably even skip this book - just go from number three "State's Evidence" to number five "Beyond Blame" in the series (which I've already started and, thankfully, appears to be a return to form for Mr. Greenleaf and Marsh Tanner) - with absolutely nothing missed.
None of the regular characters appear in this book (unless some of those presented here become regulars later?) and it really lacks most of the wit and insight that is the hallmark of the other books.
If, like me, once you find a new series you like you simply have to read all the books (in order if possible) then it won't matter what gets said about Fatal Obsession because you'll read it anyway. Just remember to go in with lowered expectations.
'Fatal Obsession', fourth book in the John Marshall Tanner series sees him back home in small-town Iowa to take care of some family business - the disposal of the family farm. After many years of generally ignoring them Marsh gets to meet his family again, he knows them vaguely and has little or no interest in playing happy families. Chaldea is a town on the rocks and it seems everyone has an interest in the farm, coal mining, oil drilling, a mall, etc. Marsh, who holds the vital vote in a split decision takes his sweet time deciding what to do. And then his nephew, Billy, is found dead - murder or suicide? Marsh is firmly on the side of murder despite Billy's strange behaviour (PTSD?) and illness brought about by Agent Orange while he served as an assassin in Vietnam. It gives him the chance to start lifting rocks to see what crawls out. It's a departure from the first three books as the pacing is quite slow and violence is almost entirely missing. It draws to a gentle close and Marsh may just be a slightly better man than when he came back to Chaldea. It's very different in style but still very good. It's the last in the series I'll be reading for a while as I can see myself beginning to find fault where the only real problem is that I am getting to know John Marshall Tanner too well and am beginning to see plot patterns.
A so-so entry in the mild-mannered mob following Lew Archer. Greenleaf's SF based lawyer-turned California PI returns to his childhood stomping grounds in the middle of a hayfields to settle some family business. Greenleaf's efforts at topicality and relevance are often heavy-handed and sometimes off-base; I'm sure the hippy-dippy sub-plot was anachronistic even in flyover country by 1983. And the "murder mystery" has a dumb, unlikely resolution. But the soft-boiled action was OK for the most part. Perhaps Tanner is more appealing in his real native setting.
Marsh takes care of some family business and learns that you can never really go back home once you've grown and left. This one digs deep into family dynamics, the fading of the small farming community, the horrors and scars of war and the harsh differences in perception versus reality when reflecting on childhood and early adulthood. Perhaps the most depressing in the series yet, but still laced with some hope and redemption—just enough to keep Marsh going.
I read all the John Marshall Tanner books back in the 1990's. I'm still loving them. This one especially. I thought the plot for this one was especially good, and I liked learning more about Tanner's background. Such addictive reading. I wish wish wish Stephen Greenleaf would write more.