Product Description

John Marshall Tanner is a reluctant survivor. Some days, as he lies in a hospital bed struggling to recuperate from a near-fatal gunshot wound, he figures life is hardly worth living.

One of the few people who can bring him out of his depression is young Rita Lombardi, in the hospital for surgery on a disfiguring birthmark and clubfeet. Rita and Tanner walk the halls together, pulling their IVs behind them, discussing the big and small issues of life: Rita's love for her friend Carlos and her passion for her special corner of the world -- the strawberry fields of California's Salinas Valley.

Rita has been around the strawberry industry since childhood, and she knows that strawberry picking is brutally hard work, and that only the landowners make money from it. In Mexico the fruit is called The Fruit of the Devil, perhaps not an inappropriate designation.

As Rita leaves the hospital for home, walking tall and straight for the first time in her life, she and Tanner pledge to stay in touch. She wants to show him her valley and the plight of the migrant workers, many of them illegals, who work so hard for so little.

But Rita never gets to welcome Tanner to her town of Haciendas. When Tanner recovers enough to call Rita, he receives some devastating news.

Rita is dead, murdered by an unknown assailant.

There will be no marriage with Carlos, no children, no daughter to comfort Rita's mother in her old age. There are rumors in town that Rita was no saint, she was a revolutionary. She wanted to organize a union in a place where unions were welcomed neither by the landowners nor the workers. Was that enough reason for somebody to want her dead? Or was the reason behind her murder more personal?

His guide is gone, but Tanner soon heads for Haciendas to see what he can learn. The San Francisco private investigator is working for free, and he'll stay as long as it takes. His client is Rita, and she's not around to pay.

Life goes on, however, and one of the pleasanter parts of Tanner's life is his give-and-take with attractive San Francisco Deputy D.A. Jill Coppelia, who wants to pick Tanner's brain on police corruption and perhaps investigate other parts of his body as well. Tanner's attracted to her, but he must be careful. And then there's the question of the bequest....

Strawberry Sunday thrusts author Stephen Greenleaf into the topical world of today's headlines, where he boldly showcases the best of his talent. As critics and readers have long known, John Marshall Tanner is broody and tough and vulnerable and altogether memorable, and Greenleaf is one of our great masters of detective fiction.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #944379 in Books
• Published on: 1999-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 287 pages

From Publishers Weekly
At the end of Past Tense (1997), the previous mystery featuring veteran PI John Marshall Tanner, readers might have wondered whether or not the San Francisco shamus would survive a particularly bloody shoot-out. But a good gumshoe is tough to kill, and Tanner is back. As his new adventure begins, Marsh is recovering physically from being nearly exsanguinated, and emotionally from the death of his old friend Charley Sleet. As he slowly mends, he meets a young woman, Rita Lombardi, on his daily walks in the hospital corridors. She is recovering from surgery to correct serious birth defects that had crippled both legs. For the first time in her life, she feels free and excited about her future, and her optimism lifts Marsh's spirits. After his release, he learns that she has been stabbed to death. Her death seems impossibly tragic to him, and so he sets out to find out who killed Rita. He starts by visiting her hometown of Haciendas, a small company town in the Salinas Valley, a strawberry-growing area in Monterey County. Everyone there seems to owe their livelihood to the Gelbride family, the local agricultural kingpins. As he digs into the circumstances of Rita's life and death, Marsh discovers that she had been working to improve working conditions for the laborers on the Gelbride strawberry farms. Everyone around her seems to think she was a saint?but perhaps she was also a revolutionary. The Tanner books often have been built around a specific social or political issue, and this one is no exception. Greenleaf takes a long, hard look at the miserable conditions in which many farmworkers live and toil, and builds a complex, absorbing plot around the topic.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
San Francisco private detective John Tanner investigates the murder of a young woman who worked hard for labor reform among strawberry pickers in the Salinas Valley. Sound plotting and meaty prose from the author of Past Tense (LJ 3/1/97).
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Convalescing in San Francisco General after trading shots with his best friend Charley Sleet (Past Tense, 1997), shamus John Marshall Tanner is a sitting duck for this season's hopeless cause, the plight of the Salinas strawberry growers personified by saintly UFS organizer Rita Lombardi, who's recuperating down the hall from an operation to straighten her long-crippled legs. Since Rita's put whatever little sparkle Marsh's surviving friends have found in his eyes, he's eager to give her a call in Haciendas (pop. 1982) when he gets out. By that time, though, she's already been killed in a savage attack that's left her fianc, independent grower Carlos Reyna, grim-faced and her mother, widowed 26 years ago by a hit-and-run driver, frozen in grief. Rita's family and friends aren't too dazed to denounce seigneurial grower Gus Gelbride, who runs everything in Haciendas but his uncontrollable wild-oats son Randy. Even though the case would be much too simple if Gus or Randy had killed Rita, Marsh digs up enough dirt on them to paint an appetizingly nasty family portrait and make you cringe with guilt next time you bite into a non-unionpicked strawberry. Sadly, his idea of detecting this time out is to bed down with the comely ADA who's trying to question him about Charley Sleet, invite the Gelbrides to tell him what Rita had on them, and accuse the wrong suspects of killing her. Despite a solution that's a lot less inventive and satisfying than the red herrings, Marsh's 13th offers another professional job of muckraking. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Terrific, as usual
As a long time fan of Greenleaf and Marsh Tanner, I thoroughly enjoyed Strawberry Sunday. I love books that inform and challenge me as well as entertain, and can always count on this author to accomplish that.

A rumor has been circulating that Greenleaf planned to retire the Tanner series, and with the last book seemed to have done so, in a most excruciating way. With this book, Marsh has been returned to me and I can imagine him, one of the rare really good people, continuing to do what he does best.

Worthy of an Edgar.
Strawberry Sunday, by Stephen Greenleaf, was nominated for an Edgar Award, 2000 -- and reading it, it's not difficult to see why. This is a mystery novel with a social conscience and a wry sense of wit. It begins with the hero, P.I. John Marshall Tanner in a hospital recovering from a gut shot and mourning the death of his close (cop) friend Charley Sleet, but most of the action takes place in the California Salinas agricultural community. Tanner has resolved to find out who murdered Rita Lombardi, a fellow hospital patient who wants to better the life of farm workers.

There are lots of red herrings, wonderful characters, and witty and often hilarious dialogues with them (and with himself). Tanner often reaches wrong conclusions and gets plenty of egg on his face, but in the end he prevails; he's a tough guy with loads of grace. Strawberry Sunday is a punchy, funny, touching novel. Read it.

Well Done! Interesting characters, settings, plot
Did you every wonder where your fresh strawberries come from? Or the pears, peaches, grapes, pineapples on your table?

Stephen Greenleaf explores the agricultural caste system through the voice of his private investigator first person narrator, John Marshall Tanner.

Tanner is a great narrator: an intelligent, world weary private eye. Tanner goes off to the strawberry fields of the Salinas area to investigate a murder, then two, and actually three. But this isn't a story of violent murder; it is a story of agricultural communities, of dating in the l990's, of small town politics, of family rivalries. Tanner's weapon is simple: he asks questions. The answers eventually fill in the pieces of a mystery.

This is a great read.