Stephen Greenleaf: Beyond Blame (UK 2016)

From the Publisher:
When psychologist Dianne Renzel is found brutally murdered in her own bed, suspicion immediately falls on her husband, law professor Lawrence Usser. An expert in temporary insanity defences, Usser isn't going to be easy to convict.

Determined to bring their daughter's killer to justice, Dianne's grief-stricken parents hire lawyer-turned-private-detective John Marshall Tanner to discover the truth.

But as Tanner digs deeper into Dianne's murder, assumptions give way to questions, dark family secrets begin to surface and it quickly becomes impossible to determine who is guilty and who is beyond blame...

Stephen Greenleaf: Beyond Blame. A John Marshall Tanner Mystery. Mulholland Books, ISBN: 9781473624061 (March, 2016), eBook, 1056 KB (ca. 292 p.), £8.99.

Stephen Greenleaf: Beyond Blame (UK 2016)

From the Publisher:
John Marshall Tanner must outwit an expert in insanity to reveal the truth behind a woman's brutal murder
Dianne Renzel's parents, a kind old Swedish couple, have just sold their business and are planning to use some of the money to purchase a car for their only child. But when their daughter is found murdered in her home, her flesh cut to ribbons by a madman's blade, they'll need to buy her justice instead. The police investigation quickly stalls, and the Renzels reach out to the only private investigator in San Francisco sensitive enough to handle this gruesome crime: John Marshall Tanner.

Dianne was married to Lawrence Usser, a constitutional law professor known for helping killers evade punishment by pleading temporary insanity. When Usser is accused of murdering Dianne, his natural recourse is his most practiced defense. It falls to Tanner to prove that Usser knew what he was doing when he butchered his innocent young wife -- and the case will take the detective far past the brink of madness.

Beyond Blame is the 5th book in the John Marshall Tanner Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

"Witty, literate, and properly balanced between misanthropy and compassion." -- Newsweek
"Timely and vital." -- Publishers Weekly
"A superior writer." -- The New York Times on Fatal Obsession

Stephen Greenleaf: Beyond Blame. A John Marshall Tanner Mystery. MysteriousPress.com / Open Road Media, ISBN: 9781504021753 (February, 2016), eBook, 3.6 MB (ca. 387 p.), $9.99.

Stephen Greenleaf: Beyond Blame (USA 1994)

From the Publisher:
"Readers who like their private-eye novels witty, literate, and properly balanced between misanthropy and compassion will find Stephen Greenleaf's BEYOND BLAME exactly to taste." -- NEWSWEEK

Berkeley, California. Birthplace of the free-speech movement. Site of campus sit-ins. Home to flower children. And now, two decades later, a city of murder.

Psychologist Dianne Renzel has been killed -- not just murdered, but mutilated in her own bed. The evidence points almost immediately to her husband, Lawrence Usser, a brilliant law professor whose specialty is the successful use of the insanity defense for a variety of unsavory clients.

Now Dianne's parents have hired Tanner to make sure Usser doesn't use his customary fancy legal footwork to skip the rap for his own wife's murder. But as Tanner digs into the case, assumption after assumption gives way to question after question, and soon it's nearly impossible to know who is guilty and who is beyond blame...

"A sometimes terrifying, always moving portrait of the underbelly of the new Berkeley." -- THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

Stephen Greenleaf: Beyond Blame. A John Marshall Tanner Mystery. Ballantine Books, ISBN: 0345336704 (January, 1994 / 5th printing), 309 p., $4.99.

Stephen Greenleaf: Beyond Blame (USA 1987)

From the Publisher:
"Stephen Greenleaf's detective hero, John Marshall Tanner, belongs to the tough California tradition established by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler... Beyond Blame is a sometimes terrifying, always moving portrait of the underbelly of the new Berkeley." -- THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

Berkeley, California. Birthplace of the free speech movement. Site of campus sit-ins. Home to flower children. And now, two decades later, a city of murder.

Psychologist Dianne Renzel has been killed -- not just murdered, but mutilated in her own bed. The evidence points almost immediately to her husband Lawrence Usser, a brilliant law professor whose speciality is the successful use of the insanity defense for a variety of unsavory clients.

Now Dianne's parents have hired Tanner to make sure Usser doesn't use his customary fancy legal footwork to skip the rap for his own wife's murder. But as Tanner digs into the case, assumption after assumption gives way to question after question and soon it's nearly impossible to know who is guilty and who is...
BEYOND BLAME

"Mr. Greenleaf is a real writer with real talent." -- THE NEW YORKER

Stephen Greenleaf: Beyond Blame. Featuring John Marshall Tanner in an exciting new mystery of murder and the insanity defense... Ballantine Books, ISBN: 0345336704 (January, 1987), 309 p., $3.95.

Stephen Greenleaf: Beyond Blame (USA 1986)

From the Publisher:
It is 1984, twenty years after the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley launched the campus protests that rocked the nation. The demonstrations, sit-ins, and love-ins of the sixties have given way to a new Berkeley -- a gourmet ghetto where food has replaced politics and sex as the passion of the people. But the relative calm of the eighties is brought to a sudden halt with the savage murder of Dianne Renzel, a skilled psychologist who devoted her life to helping the many clinging to Berkeley's slippery underbelly.

Frustrated by the ineffectiveness of the police, the victim's grief-stricken parents hire John Marshall Tanner to find their daughter's killer. Tanner's search for the truth leads him from the fashionable homes in the Berkeley Hills through the transient haunts in People's Park to an abandoned tenement the youthful runaways call Hell House. Along the way he discovers the chaos behind the calm façade of Dianne Renzel's respected family -- adultery, drug abuse, maybe even murder. Tanner finds himself falling deeper into this bizarre mystery as the trail of blood leads him from one suspect to the next:

-- Lisa Usser, the troubled teenage daughter of the victim, who has deserted her family for a tough street gang
-- Robert Nifton, better known on the streets of Berkeley as the Maniac, a madman who holds Lisa under his drug-crazed spell
-- Adam Lonborg, a psychiatrist and family friend who is privy to the Ussers' darkest secrets
-- and Lawrence Usser, husband of the victim, a brilliant law professor and expert on the insanity defense who is tormented by his daughter's hatred and his wife's murder.

In Beyond Blame, Stephen Greenleaf weaves a page-turner of a plot in true detective-story style, at the same time taking a serious look at the difficulty of confronting mental illness within the constraints of the criminal justice system. With his usual style of sharp observations, witty descriptions, snappy one-liners, and a cast of characters both troubled and compelling, Greenleaf has created another very special mystery that will delight and satisfy all Tanner fans.

STEPHEN GREENLEAF was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Centerville, Iowa. He has received degrees from Carleton College, in Northfield, Minnesota, and from the Boalt Hall School of Law of the University of California, Berkeley. After serving two years in the army, including a year in Vietnam, he practiced law for five years before beginning to write fiction. Four of his five previous books feature private detective John Marshall Tanner of San Francisco. His fifth book, The Ditto List, was Mr. Greenleaf's first nonmystery novel. Mr. Greenleaf lives in Oregon with his wife, Ann, an author of children's books, and his son, Aaron. He is currently working on another Tanner mystery.

Jacket illustration by Paul Birling
Jacket design by Wendy Bass

Stephen Greenleaf: Beyond Blame. The New John Marshall Tanner Mystery. Villard Books, ISBN: 0394541154 (December, 1985), 290 p., $15.95.