Stephen Greenleaf: Death Bed (USA 2016)

From the Publisher:
The search for a dying millionaire's son leads John Marshall Tanner to a case of domestic terrorism
Maximilian Kottle spent all his life fearing death. When he eventually developed cancer, he thought the disease might prove a disappointment. He was wrong. Dying is far worse than he had imagined. With less than a month to live, the wealthiest man in San Francisco calls on private detective John Marshall Tanner to fulfill his final wish: He wants to see his son.

Thirty-year-old Karl has been missing since he disappeared a decade ago, lost in the fog of sixties radicalism, leaving his plutocrat father in the dust. As the elder Kottle's time runs out, he hopes the past can be forgotten, but as Tanner soon learns, the wounds of the sixties haven't fully healed, and finding Karl Kottle will be an explosive feat.

Death Bed is the 2nd book in the John Marshall Tanner Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

"A superior writer." -- The New York Times on Fatal Obsession

Stephen Greenleaf: Death Bed. A John Marshall Tanner Mystery. MysteriousPress.com / Open Road Media, ISBN: 9781504027359 (February, 2016), eBook, 3.7 MB (ca. 306 p.), $7.99.

Stephen Greenleaf: Death Bed (UK 2015)

From the Publisher:
Called in to help dying millionaire Maximilian Kottle locate his estranged son, P.I. John Marshall Tanner doesn't know what to expect.

Soon Tanner is on a quest to find Karl Kottle, a former sixties radical and alleged murderer. As his search continues, Tanner encounters a host of potential clients, including a muckraking newspaper editor whose star investigative reporter may have finally gone too far...

Stephen Greenleaf: Death Bed. A John Marshall Tanner Mystery. Mulholland Books, ISBN: 9781473624030 (December, 2015), eBook, 636 KB (ca. 240 p.), £8.99.

Stephen Greenleaf: Death Bed (USA 1992)

From the Publisher:
"THE BEST SUCCESSOR TO THE RAYMOND CHANDLER-ROSS MACDONALD TRADITION TO COME ALONG IN A DECADE!" -- The New Republic
Take a dying oil billionaire looking for his long-estranged radical son, a muckraking newspaper editor missing his star investigative reporter, and call in John Marshall Tanner -- a lonely San Francisco private eye, equal parts Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, and Lew Archer.

Add snappy one-liners, witty descriptions, sharp observations, and a cast of characters both seedy and charming.
Put it all together and you have a very special page-turning mystery.
DEATH BED

Cover art by Nicholas Rozsa

Stephen Greenleaf: Death Bed. A John Marshall Tanner Mystery. Bantam Books, ISBN: 0553293486 (January, 1992), 298 p., $4.99.

Stephen Greenleaf: Death Bed (USA 1982)

From the Publisher:
"THE BEST SUCCESSOR TO THE RAYMOND CHANDLER-ROSS MACDONALD TRADITION TO COME ALONG IN A DECADE!"
The New Republic
Take a dying oil billionaire looking for his long-estranged radical son, a muckraking newspaper editor missing his star investigative reporter, and call in John Marshall Tanner -- a lonely San Francisco private eye, equal parts Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, and Lew Archer.

Add snappy one-liners, witty descriptions, sharp observations, and a cast of characters both seedy and charming.
Put it all together and you have a very special page-turning mystery.
DEATH BED

Stephen Greenleaf: Death Bed. Ballantine Books, ISBN: 0345301897 (June, 1982), 232 p., $2.50.

Stephen Greenleaf: Death Bed (USA 1980)

From the Publisher:
The New Yorker lavished Stephen Greenleaf with compliments for his last mystery novel, comparing him with Hammett, Chandler, and Ross Macdonald -- serious praise for a seriously talented writer.

In this sequel San Francisco investigator John Tanner takes on two unrelated cases that suddenly blend as smoothly as a pair of limousines colliding. It's typically Californian, Tanner feels, because the problem isn't the missing persons but rather the people he keeps finding. An estranged son who doesn't want his dying father's millions. A "girl reporter" who keeps knocking him into the muck she rakes up constantly. And a client who keeps dying over and over and over.

Death Bed is well outside the ordinary limits of mystery fiction. This is not a simple whodunit, but a compelling, perversely charming book about who did what to whom way back when and why they're about to be very, very sorry.

STEPHEN GREENLEAF's sophisticated Grave Error was a Mystery Guild Alternate Selection and was bought by four foreign publishers. This, his latest work, is a Dual Main Selection of the Playboy Book Club. Mr. Greenleaf and his family are moving back to California from lowa City, lowa.

Jacket design by Gary Cooley

Stephen Greenleaf: Death Bed. A Detective Story. The Dial Press, ISBN: 0803717016 (October, 1980), 306 p., $10.95.