Wed 26 Mar 2025
An Archived PI Mystery Review: STEPHEN GREENLEAF – Grave Error.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[5] Comments
STEPHEN GREENLEAF – Grave Error. John Marshall Tanner #1. Dial Press, hardcover, 1979. Ballantine, paperback, 1982. Bantam, paperback, 1991.
This book seems to have been published in a vacuum. I don’t really recall any fanfare or critical attention being paid to it back when it was first published. Or if there was, I missed it. And it’s a shame, for it’s certainly a book worth the reading, especially if you’re a private eye fan and don’t yet mind another tale of tangled Californian bloodlines.
The jacket says Greenleaf is a Chandler fan. It’s easy to believe. He must also be a devoted reader of Ross Macdonald. The similes and other metaphorical flights of fancy are off and soaring from the start. Or take it from page seven: “She filled her blue knit dress the way a miser fills his coffers. … The tiny gold turtle pinned over her left breast was as smug as Governor Brown.”
Greenleaf’s detective is John Marshall Tanner, once a lawyer and now a private investigator. In this case it seems that San Francisco has its own consumer-advocate version of Ralph Nader, but Tanner is hired by the man’s wife to investigate his strange recent behavior.
The pair also have an adopted daughter, and she has a problem as well. This one results in the death of one of Tanner’s closest friends, also a private eye.
I mentioned bloodlines. The trail of too many people leads back to the small town of Oxtail, where too many secrets have never been buried. I had half the answers right away, and the half I didn’t have explained why I didn’t believe the half I knew.
(It’s not mathematically possible, I know, at least not in the strictest sense, but there is at least another twist and a half before Tanner uncovers the full answer and a half.)
Keep an eye on Greenleaf. I believe he has a future.
Rating: B
March 26th, 2025 at 10:21 pm
Greenleaf was one of the underrated PI authors writing in the 80’s, along with Arthur Lyons, Jonathan Valin and Jeremiah Healy. Always good stories and writing, and characters that you came to care about.
March 27th, 2025 at 12:19 am
Quite right. It was a hay day of PI fiction, and I’m not sure we appreciated it as much as we should have. Greenleaf was a big p=rt of it.
March 28th, 2025 at 1:38 pm
There’s a plot flaw in this one that I could not forgive, so much so that I never gave Greenleaf another shot. I can barely remember it now, but…to the best of my recollection……
SPOILER ALERT
there’s a beautiful woman that helps him crack the case through making some investigative calls on his behalf. Later, it turns out that she’s one of the perps, and Tanner basically lets her kill herself in lieu of getting charged (a la Marlowe in Long Goodbye). The question is, why the hell did she crack the case for Tanner in the first place? The only explanation is that when she helped Tanner crack the case, greenleaf hadn’t yet decided to implicate her. Implicating her later made for some nice ad hoc melodrama at the end, at the expense of the plausibility of the plot.
March 28th, 2025 at 3:52 pm
Woosh! Someone who’s read the book more recently than I will have to respond to this. As related as by you Tony, this is a rather major flaw. Missed by me, too long ago.
March 29th, 2025 at 10:14 pm
Somehow Greenleaf managed to be successful and at the same time never quite mainstream. I signed on with the first outing and admired the series as it leaned into the more serious Macdonald style without ever losing the Chandlerian touches.
With Healey and his Cuddy books Greenleaf and Tanner were more than a cut above the spate of really good series of the period.
It’s been some time since I read this, but as I recall the lady in question helps Tanner in hope of throwing him off enough to keep herself out of it, but I grant I may have read that into it rather than actually read it.