Wed 7 Oct 2015
Archived Mystery Review: STEPHEN GREENLEAF – State’s Evidence.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[7] Comments
STEPHEN GREENLEAF – State’s Evidence. Dial Press, hardcover, 1982. Ballantine, paperback, 1983. Bantam Crimeline, paperback, 1991.
A few [posts] back, as you may recall, I had some misgivingsabout Death Bed, Stephen Greenleaf’s tale of private eye John Marshall Tanner that immediately preceded this one.
You can forget all that. If you’re a fan of PI fiction, whatever you do, don’t let this one pass you by! Toned down, but thankfully never quite eliminated, is some of the overbearing narrative that has marked Greenleaf’s two earlier books. The dialogue now carries a greater share of the story, and the plot-line is far less reliant on the flowery but not always appropriate series of metaphors that Greenleaf seemed to put so much stake in before.
It all begins when Tanner is hired by a deputy district attorney in the town of El Gordo to find a missing witness, a woman who claims to have seen a fatal hit-and-run accident.
But do you remember ever watching the TV series The Outsider? El Gordo is one of those typically Californian towns that private eyes keep stumbling across, bright and sunny on the surface, but simply riddled with hostility, crime, and corruption just underneath. It doesn’t take Tanner long to start digging, nor for the foul matter to start making itself known.
Naturally, not all is what it seems. Some of the missing woman’s friends believe that she’s been kidnapped, murdered, or worse. Others feel she has merely fled her husband, a quietly arrogant tyrant with a fetish for things Oriental.
Surprisingly, everyone who has known the woman reveals to Tanner a completely different side to her personality. Not surprisingly, little by little, Tanner is forced to realize that D. A. Tolson has not told him all he needs to know about the case. Even the federal government, it seems, is vitally interested in its outcome.
Rampant coincidence seems to abound, but in each instance there is a substantive reason behind each of the bombshells Tanner soon begins to uncover. And bombshells they are. An added plus, at least as far as I was concerned, was the touch of courtroom theatrics a la Perry Mason that highlights a central portion of the cases he’s in. Tanner is also an ex-lawyer, and it’s about time we saw that fact become a more essential part of one of his cases.
It may not happen, but Greenleaf should begin to start getting the recognition he deserves with this book. It’s certainly fine enough to suggest that he’s beginning to nudge his way out from behind the shadows of Chandler and Macdonald — his predecessors down these same dark alleys of Californian hypocrisy and despair.
Rating: A.
October 7th, 2015 at 6:15 pm
Greenleaf’s books are very good, but he never got the recognition or sales he deserved.
October 7th, 2015 at 6:52 pm
I was a big fan but he never got real traction in the field despite solid reviews.
October 7th, 2015 at 7:22 pm
Solid, far above average work, but no traction, is that the consensus? I like the use of “traction” in this context — or in this case, the lack thereof.
October 8th, 2015 at 12:56 pm
The series bordered on exceptional but never seemed to catch on, not even to the extent of Healy’s Jeremiah Cuddy series. I had a feeling reading them that I was in a relatively small group that followed the series regularly and that it should have been a much larger one.
One thing about the series compared to most of Greenleaf’s contemporaries was that it felt to me like a much more thoughtful, and for lack of a better word, intellectual private eye series than most. While many of the standard tropes were there true to most books in the genre (the small CA town hiding corruption at all levels here) the books eschewed the usual thrills for the most part — certainly of the Spenser school popular at the time — in favor of the more mature books in Chandler and Macdonald’s output.
There was little of the pulp/paperback original eye feeling to them, with these much more about character and plot than action and movement. You had to appreciate Greenleaf for his skills with words and plot and character because that whole pulp dynamic was missing.
And while I liked Tanner a good deal I honestly never got a feel for him as a person, not even as the author’s avatar. He was intelligent, compassionate, empathic, and strong but I had trouble giving him a face or really a voice wholly his own. I suppose I’m saying he was not a vivid character in the sense of Spenser, or Nameless, or Jeremiah Cuddy, or Harry Stoner, or Dave Brandsetter to name a few of the best.
The books appealed to me on a less visceral level than many lesser more popular eye series and I think Greenleaf intended that. I looked out for them, bought most in hardcover when they came out, but I read them in a much different state of mind than I did some of the other popular eye series of the era.
But,when I trimmed down the eye series I was following I never considered stopping following Tanner and Greenleaf which says something — though perhaps just about me.
October 8th, 2015 at 1:40 pm
I have been struggling to put into words why others like Robert B. Parker caught on so widely, appealing to even those who otherwise never read PI novels, and Greenleaf never did. It’s been too long since I’ve read one, I’m afraid.
But not so long that I don’t find anything to disagree with your assessment, David. Quite the opposite! I think you’ve nailed it.
October 9th, 2015 at 1:49 pm
I believe I mentioned in my own review of this one in The Perp, that green leaf came to my attention through an article in the SF Chronicle which featured three “new mystery authors”, Greenleaf, Geoffrey Miller (THE BLACK GLOVE) and some guy named Pronzini. We all know Pronzini became a star, Greenleaf much less so, and whatever happened to Miller?
I agree with David’s take on this book and Greenleaf, I liked the first two books better than you did, Steve. What happened to me was I lost interest at about book six, or perhaps seven, when he seemed to push his version of social consciousness over the mystery plot elements. Got preachy. I think I quit in the middle of one and didn’t read any more. I still like the early ones, though, and think they compare favorably with the early Nameless books of the same time.
October 9th, 2015 at 4:52 pm
I’ve read and enjoyed all of Greenleaf’s Tanner novels, wishing there were many more of them, and would rank him up there with the best of the best, far more literate and thought-provoking than, say, the grossly overrated Robert B. Parker. (Yes, I know that’s heresy among many, but after the first dozen or so Spenser novels, I gave up on Parker, deciding he was a pretentious–and often childish–hack.)
As others here have pointed out, Greenleaf never got the kind of major recognition he deserved.
Richard R. thought his latter books’ social consciousness was objectionably overdone, whereas I thought he presented an intriguing approach to significant issues and which, for me, was a big part of his (risk-taking) appeal. Perhaps this comes down to a liberal-versus-conservative perspective, but whether that’s so or a different criterion applies, Stephen Greenleaf should be read–and recalled–as a serious, skillful, colorful contributor to some of the most intelligent private eye novels in the pantheon.