Unlike some series writers who hit their peak early and then coast on past triumphs for the next dozen books, Stephen Greenleaf goes from strength to strength, stretching the boundaries of the genre without giving up its traditional values. His detective, Marsh Tanner, grows and changes with each outing, keeping our interest alive. In his latest, Tanner has to deal with a nasty mixture of sexual abuse and the controversy surrounding recovered memory. Greenleaf brings it all home in a scene where Tanner is playing with his baby daughter. "I was having a wonderful time until it occurred to me that at some point it would become wrong. At some point putting her on my lap, or letting her flop on my belly, or tickling her ribs and itching her nose and playing piggy with her toes will be inappropriate and even harmful, at least in the view of some. How was I supposed to know when that time had come?" Past Tanners available in paperback include Beyond Blame, False Conception and Flesh Wounds.


From Library Journal
The 12th John Marshall Tanner novel lives up to the tradition of excellence found in Greenleaf's recent Flesh Wounds (Scribner, 1996). San Francisco-based investigator Tanner tries to discover why his best friend, Charley Sleet?a police officer who is one of the best men he's ever known?shoots the defendant in a sexual abuse case involving incest, killing him in an open courtroom. As Tanner trails Sleet, trying to understand his shocking and dramatic change of character, he links him to subsequent murders. Living people populate this book. Tanner himself?moody, witty, and appealing?reveals his own dramas, ruminating and extemporizing on life's issues as he seeks out the mysteries of the human heart in a quest to save his friend from himself. Moving and full of valuable insights, this book belongs in all general collections.?Michelle Foyt, Berlin-Peck Memorial Lib., Kensington, Ct.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Marilyn Stasio
If authors really wanted to fool around with the formula of the private- eye novel, they would cut away the hero's ethical armor and challenge the principles of his code of honor. Give him a personal vendetta and see what it takes to make him betray a trust or resort to outlaw violence. Stephen Greenleaf makes a stab at this in Past Tense when John Marshall Tanner, his conscientious San Francisco investigator, rushes to the aid of his best friend, a veteran homicide cop named Charley Sleet, who shoots a man dead in open court and refuses to offer any explanation or defense.


From Booklist
Charley Sleet is a San Francisco cop with an exemplary record and a reputation for nonviolence. So when he guns down an accused child-molester in court and refuses to explain his motive, private eye Marsh Tanner, Sleet's best friend, swings into action. The court case was a summary civil hearing in which the victim, Leonard Wints, was learning of the charges brought against him by his daughter, Julian. With no obvious links between Sleet and Wints, Tanner pursues first Julian and then her charismatic therapist, a believer in repressed-memory syndrome. Though she won't betray her patient-therapist privilege, she senses Tanner's desire to help his friend, and an unusual relationship develops. When Charley escapes from jail and more killings are attributed to him, Tanner begins to doubt both his friend and his devotion to him. The believable and heartbreaking reason behind Charley's rage is revealed late and forces Tanner to put his own life and values to a severe test. As always, a John Marshall Tanner novel is about so much more than murder. Readers will question their own positions on revenge, the parameters of friendship, isolation in the '90s, and the validity of repressed-memory syndrome. Just when it seems the series can't possibly get better, Greenleaf takes it to a new level. Wes Lukowsky


From Kirkus Reviews
Have the world's best-publicized social problems ever weighed as heavily on any shamus as they do on John Marshall Tanner? Now that he's grappled with tainted-blood scandals, white supremacists, adoption skullduggery, and, most recently, computer rape (Flesh Wounds, 1996), he is in for a double body blow. First, because the murder of Leonard Wints, while he was sitting in court waiting for his attorney to open his defense against the charge of abusing his daughter, takes Marsh into a minefield of accusations of incest and counter-accusations of bogus recovered memories. And second, because the man who executed Wints in front of dozens of horrified witnesses was Lt. Charley Sleet, a 30-year veteran of the SFPD and Marsh's best friend. What's the connection between Charley and Wints? Why does Charley admit his guilt, do his best to keep his buddies from hiring a lawyer for him, then break out of jail, leaving another dead man in his wake? And when nobody wants to say a word to Marsh, even to lie, how is he ever going to figure out what made a man with half a lifetime's devotion to the system turn vigilante--with every promise of more violence to come? Though it's never less than professional, Tanner's 12th works better as anguished fictional biography than as mystery. If you care anything about Greenleaf's p.i., you'll care a lot more by the last page. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Midwest Book Review
How can a law-abiding policeman shoot a suspect in open court, and what happens when he tries to convince all his friends not to defend him? San Francisco P. I. John Tanner isn't about to let his good pal go to jail: not without an investigation and a fight in Greenleaf's unusual crime story.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

When police Lieutenant Charlie Sleet breaks into sudden acts of violence, San Francisco P.I. John Marshall Tanner must unearth the repressed memories that lie at the heart of his friend's corruption and vigilantism--and put an end to his killing. HC: Scribner.

FROM THE CRITICS

Maureen Corrigan