Beyond Blame
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
John Marshall Tanner recounts his latest grim experiences in Greenleaf's fifth novel about this California private eye. In Berkeley, Lawrence Usser is notorious for defending criminals as insane and therefore not guilty. When the lawyer is arrested for the vicious murder of his wife Dianne, her parents hire Tanner to prove the accused sane, to prevent him from escaping justice. Questioning people close to the Ussers, Tanner clashes with Lawrence's psychiatrist who has also treated the couple's young daughter Lisa, a runaway. The detective finds Lisa strung out on drugs and holed up with a gang playing weird games in Berkeley's sub-human corners. Before Tanner solves his knotty case, the plot grows to Byzantine dimensions, with elaborations that strain belief, in spite of its timely and vital subject and the author's superior literary skills. January 27
