STEPHEN GREENLEAF – Blood Type. John Marshall Tanner #8. William Morrow, hardcover, 1992. Bantam, paperback; 1st printing, October 1993.

   In this, his latest adventure, PI John Marshall Tanner doesn’t have a client for quite a while. A drinking buddy having marital trouble is dead, and Tanner doesn’t accept the common belief that it was suicide. There is a lot of emotional baggage that’s lugged around in this rather lengthy detective tale, and most of it is eventually opened for all to see.

   Unfortunately, somewhere along the line Tanner’s investigation gets sidetracked, and the story transforms itself into a massive, full-fledged medical thriller. And somehow, not so coincidentally, my interest in the proceedings faded, flickered and all but went out.

   I’m going to call this the Reverse Villainy Syndrome. The more gigantic the plot, the less meaningful the solution to the original crime becomes. I also know that Greenleaf realized this, too, since he makes just about the same point somewhere around halfway through.

   The ending is also a huge disappointment. Tanner is good at guessing, no doubt about it. He has most of the solution wrong most of the way through, and then, just as he finally seems to get it right, the story stops, and suddenly it’s over. Left behind are only a few little questions, the kind asked by inquiring little minds (like mine) and never really answered.

   There are a lot of memorable characters brought to life in this book, but the bottom line is that Tanner doesn’t really do any detecting in this book, and it was the ending that I especially didn’t care for.