John Putnam Thatcher #24

A Shark out of Water – Emma Lathen

This mystery has a unique setting: Gdansk, Poland, in the in the post-Soviet 1990s. It also has a unique victim: a terror technocrat.

Stefan Zebriski wields expert knowledge of all things shipping in the Baltic. He provides useful information for his superiors in BADA, the Baltic Area Development Association, a grouping of the 10 countries on the Baltic Sea. But he’s a terror in that he gives advice on policy to the policy-makers. The idealistic advice is unwelcome and so is his stepping out of his lane to give it.  He’s also passionate so when he finds out about fraud going in his beloved BADA, he lets people know his suspicions. But before he can provide any details, he is battered to death with a tire iron in the BADA parking lot.

Colonel Oblonski, a Polish police detective, investigates the murder. Oblonski is out of his comfort zone when it comes to dealing with bureaucrats and diplomats in non-governmental organizations. So he comes to depend on consultations with series hero John Putnam Thatcher of Sloan Guaranty Trust, the third largest bank in the world. Thatcher is joined in Poland by his Sloan colleague Everett Gabler, who is satirized as a detail-obsessed Puritan who enjoys funerals.

Emma Lathen was the pen name of Mary Jane Latsis (1927-97), an economist, and Martha Hennisart (1929 - ), a lawyer. They co-wrote 24 novels featuring John Putnam Thatcher and seven novels starring a Congressman-sleuth under the pseudonym R.B. Dominic. Each Thatcher story is set in an industry providing a unique product or service such as fast food, nursery plants, clothing, cars, or Catholic schools. This novel in fact was last novel because no more books came after Latsis’ passing in 1997. Though the business environment has changed in the last 30 years, their message that good managers must combine knowledge of money with people skills is still as true as ever.