Beyond Blame

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....