Right on the Money - Emma Lathen
Given the background of this mystery is a corporate merger in 1993, I wouldn’t blame a reader to label "not likely to read" a mystery set in a business environment as dead as the dodo. In fact the author makes the merger the focus of good old American drive, pride, optimism, but also the stuff of Greek drama, with fatal flaws bringing about tragedy.
In the 22nd mystery starring John Putnam Thatcher, the banker and amateur detective has to get to the bottom of the murder of a loudmouth so ambitious for attention and promotions that an insurance adjustor expresses surprise that the victim made it as far as 32 years of age.
Aqua Supplies, Inc. (ASI) is too big, too bureaucratic, and too complacent to fire anybody and so not able to develop new countertop appliances that middle-class consumers might actually want to buy. So it fixes to merge – that is, gobble up whole without so much as a belch – with Ecker, a small family owned and operated designer and maker of nifty percolators and such. Since the disability retirement of the Ecker heir, its main assets are its inventive but ageing founder and its highly talented female CFO.
ASI assistant division manager Victor Hunnicut rolls his eyes at the kool-aid stand ways of Ecker. His skill set, he realizes, would not make him a candidate for running Ecker so he puts his ambition above the interests of employer and makes plans to quash the merger plans. He fears that other middle managers will leapfrog over him, thus cutting him off from chances to shine for his superiors. While giving Ecker a get-acquainted tour, the hotshot comes off a snot and intimates to Ken Nicholls that factions in both companies are duking it out over the merger plans. Ken Nicholls is a junior banking exec who’s often sent by hero John Putnam Thatcher to gather information.
After the tour, things start to get criminous. The quaint old mill that stored Ecker’s financial computers and files for research and development is torched by an arsonist. Go-getter Vic Hunnicut is murdered at the annual trade show.
Emma Lathen was the pen name of Mary Latsis (economic analyst) and Martha Hennissart (attorney). Both knew the worlds of business at all levels from clerks to CEOs, so they felt at home in a constantly changing business environment and the variety of personalities to be found in the private sector. Sure the business environment has changed in the last 35 years, but human nature has not. As old-school feminists, they have acerbic fun satirizing businessmen who are buoyed up by secretaries and female middle-managers but attribute their success to their own intelligence and diligence. This is hardly a phenomenon unknown in 2024.
Click on the title to see the review.- Banking on Death (1961)
- A Place for Murder (1963)
- Accounting for Murder (1964); Silver Dagger Award
- Murder Makes the Wheels Go Round (1966)
- Death Shall Overcome (1966)
- Murder Against the Grain (1967); Gold Dagger Award
- A Stitch in Time (1968)
- Come to Dust (1968)
- When in Greece (1969); shortlisted for the Edgar Award
- Murder to Go (1969)
- Pick Up Sticks (1970)
- Ashes to Ashes (1971)
- The Longer the Thread (1971)
- Murder Without Icing (1972)
- Sweet and Low (1974)
- By Hook or by Crook (1975)
- Double, Double, Oil and Trouble (1978)
- Going for Gold (1981)
- Green Grow the Dollars (1982)
- Something in the Air (1988)
- East is East (1991)
- Right on the Money (1993)
- Brewing Up a Storm (1996)
- A Shark Out of Water (1997)
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