Stephen Greenleaf: Fatal Obsession (USA 2016)

From the Publisher:
Back on his family farm, John Marshall Tanner investigates a murder that hits very close to home
It's been thirty years since John Marshall Tanner, private eye, returned to Chaldea, and he hasn't missed the farm -- three hundred acres of thin topsoil and ratty growth -- any more than he's missed his family. There's his sister, Gail, worn down by decades of trying to do the right thing; his brother Curt, wallowing in depression ever since his son, Billy, came back broken from Vietnam; and his other brother, Matt, in debt up to his eyeballs and trying desperately to hang on to his new wife. As the family convenes to discuss selling the farm, tensions run high -- and tragedy looms on the horizon.

When Billy is found hanging in a public park, the family dismisses it as suicide. But our protagonist knows murder when he sees it, and he is determined to learn what happened to the dead boy, no matter the cost to his family.

Fatal Obsession is the 4th book in the John Marshall Tanner Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

"A superior writer." -- The New York Times
"The legitimate heir to the mantle of the late Ross MacDonald." -- Chicago Tribune

Stephen Greenleaf: Fatal Obsession. A John Marshall Tanner Mystery. MysteriousPress.com / Open Road Media, ISBN: 9781504021029 (February, 2016), eBook, 3.6 MB (ca. 346 p.), $7.99.

Stephen Greenleaf: Fatal Obsession (UK 2016)

From the Publisher:
There's no place like home...
P.I. John Marshall Tanner returns home to the Midwest for the first time in thirty years to help decide the fate of his family farm. With his brothers and sister at loggerheads, tensions are running high.

But family squabbles give way to suspicions when Tanner's nephew Billy is found hanging from a tree in the local park. The verdict is suicide, but Tanner doesn't believe that Billy took his own life and there is no lack of suspects for the crime.

On his mission to expose the truth, Tanner encounters a host of former friends, and before he can untangle the mystery he will have to face a few ghosts from his own past.

Stephen Greenleaf: Fatal Obsession. A John Marshall Tanner Mystery. Mulholland Books, ISBN: 9781473624054 (February, 2016), eBook, 1316 KB (ca. 262 p.), £9.99.

Stephen Greenleaf: Fatal Obsession (USA 1984)

From the Publisher:
"THE BEST SUCCESSOR TO THE RAYMOND CHANDLER -- ROSS MACDONALD TRADITION TO COME ALONG IN A DECADE!" -- The New Republic
It's old home week for John Marshall Tanner. Back in the Midwest after thirty years, he must help his sister and brothers to settle the question of the family farm.

Suddenly Tanner's nephew Billy is found hanging from a tree in the local park. The verdict is suicide. Tanner is convinced that Billy didn't put the rope around his own neck.

An embittered Vietnam vet, Billy had enemies all over town... most with motives. The suspects include Tanner's former girl friends, high school buddies, teachers, even his family. So before the hard-boiled Tanner can untangle the mystery, he has to face a few ghosts from his own past.

"MR. GREENLEAF IS A REAL WRITER WITH REAL TALENT!" -- The New Yorker

Stephen Greenleaf: Fatal Obsession. A John Marshall Tanner Mystery. Ballantine Books, ISBN: 0345314859 (May, 1984), 247 p., $2.50.

Stephen Greenleaf: Fatal Obsession (USA 1983)

From the Publisher:
Upon publication of his first novel, Grave Error, The New Yorker hailed Stephen Greenleaf as "a real writer with a real talent." The New York Times called his second novel, Death Bed, "as good a private-eye novel as one is going to encounter," and noted critic Robin Winks wrote in The New Republic that Greenleaf was "the best successor to the Raymond Chandler-Ross Macdonald tradition to come along in a decade." The New Yorker positively raved about Greenleaf's third novel, State's Evidence, calling it "pure and total pleasure."

Here is the fourth novel in the highly acclaimed John Marshall Tanner series. In Fatal Obsession Tanner returns home to Chaldea, a small farming village in the Midwest. The visit takes a particularly unpleasant turn when Tanner's nephew, Billy, is found hanged by the neck. Tanner deduces it was murder, not suicide, only to find nobody else in town really cares.

It seems Billy came back half crazed from Vietnam, reminding the good citizens of Chaldea about things they'd rather forget, digging up secrets they'd rather weren't known. A real troublemaker. So almost everybody in town had a motive for doing him in. But Tanner's real trouble is that, at every stage of his search for the killer, he keeps bumping into his own past: old girl friends, school chums, teachers, and friends of the family -- all of them suspects. The terrible truths finally uncovered convince Tanner that nothing was ever quite the way it seemed.

Stephen Greenleaf is the author of Grave Error (a Mystery Guild Alternate Selection), Death Bed (a Dual Main Selection of the Playboy Book Club), and State's Evidence (a Mystery Guild Main Selection). He lives in Oregon with his family.

Jacket painting by Gary Cooley
Jacket typography by Jack Ribik

Stephen Greenleaf: Fatal Obsession. The Dial Press, ISBN: 0385278861 (May, 1983), 250 p., $14.95.