Death Bed

Rating:
Summary: Imagine, a PI novel dealing with the investigation of crime.
Review: Death Bed by Stephen Greenleaf has the flavor of a Chandlernovel and the credibility of a police report. If you likeunending monologues about clothes, cats, chocolate, refried beans, gourmet coffee, or obscure musical instruments dating from the Rennaisance--save yourself the time. Do not read this book. Greenleaf's protagonist, John Marshall Tanner, a San Francisco PI, is primarily concerned with chasing down leads and getting to the bottom of things. The streets may at times get mean and gritty. Tanner may occasionally barge in where he is not welcomed like your dear Aunt Sally. He may ask difficult questions and sometimes insists on answers, even at the risk of speaking impolitely. The case in Death Bed contains at least a few echoes of Chandler's The Big Sleep. The client is a rich old gent who is literally on his death bed. The mystery revolves around the wayward son (rather than daughters), and whom the client wants found. Along the way we encounter a variety of credible characters, not the least of which is the Serpico-like reporter who loses himself for months at a time on the trails of his own investigations, and may have finally gone too far. Greenleaf's prose is smooth and craftsman-like and full of artful touches of metaphor and simile. There is a decided lack of emoting on the part of his PI, but in this hand-wringing, anxiety-laded, compassion-bloated epoch of amateurs masquerading as pros the absence comes as something of a relief. "We had been sitting in the room for close to an hour, talking about this and that--the Warriors, the Democrats, Mozart, Montaigne. I was a nondescript private eye who could stuff all of his assets into some carry-on luggage if he owned any carry-on luggage, and he was one of the ten wealthiest men in the city if you didn't count the Chinese. He had everything money could buy and most of the things it could rent. In a while he would be renting me....."

Rating:
Summary: Tanner's second is somewhat pedestrian
Review: Stephen Greenleaf's John Marshall Tanner detective series has always been dependable, but never quite on par with luminaries such as Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder or the great Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe. "Death Bed" was the second novel in the series, and it suffers a bit from the sophomore slump. It delves into subject matter that includes a dying multi-millionaire searching for his estranged son, and the dying embers of 1960s radicalism in the early 1980s. Throw in a subpolt about a missing hotshot investigative reporter and a disillusioned physician, and things get complicated enough. The story's main problem is that the 60s radical angle doesn't come off that well. James Crumley did a much better job examining that theme in "The Last Good Kiss" and "The Wrong Case." And the ending is not the most plausible that Greenleaf has ever come up with. Overall, the Tanner series is a good one, but this is not one of the better entries.