I read this book for the Vintage Mystery Bingo
Reading Challenge 2015. The challenge
is to read 6 or more Vintage Mysteries. All novels must have been originally
written between 1960
and 1989 inclusive and be from the
mystery category.
I read this for the category “R-5: Written under a Pseudonym”
Death Shall
Overcome – Emma Lathen
A major firm throws Wall Street into a tizzy when it announces
its plans to appoint a black millionaire to a seat on the stock exchange. At
the reception for the prospective partner, an existing partner, an old-school racist,
is poisoned. John Putnam Thatcher, the investment banker series hero of the
series, must find the perp to prevent trouble on the Street.
I admit a topical book from 1966 in a hard sell in our
year of 2015.
Heaven knows when we post-moderns read about race
relations in our childhoods, we’re ever ready to cringe at inevitable outdated
terms and attitudes, expressed by either the characters or the author.
Mercifully, Lathen’s tone is serious – she assumes civil rights as a given. She
describes the besieged black candidate as “a replica of a Wall Street financier
with a dark skin.” Like other sons of old money, he gives, “the impression of
integrity, reliability, and conservatism. A man of property at every point. In
a happier era he might have been a Republican.” Lathen implies that only
members of the lunatic fringe would oppose his candidacy and that their fussing
and fighting interfere with the real business of Wall Street – spinning money.
Lathen satirizes black civil rights activists and their
mouthpieces in the media. For limousine liberals, there is an NAACP rally and a
banquet at Lincoln Center. There is a very funny march on Wall Street by the
Colored Association of Shareholders (CASH). The march is led by black writer
based on – well, I will let you guess:
Mr. Simpson, noted for his
simpleminded and successful novels about an expatriate in Paris and his relationship
with a sylphlike busboy, had the resonant voice of an actor and firm grip on
the microphone thrust before him.
Gotta be James Baldwin – and that “simpleminded” burns. Giovanni’s Room, about a white American
expat in Paris and his affair with an Italian bartender, was a lot of things,
but it wasn’t simpleminded. But overall, genuinely cringe-worthy moments were
avoided. Lathen comes off as the kind of Rockefeller Republican that Goldwater
dismissed as “dimestore New Deal.”
Another anti-Lathen argument is that she scants the
mystery side of things. The reveals are fairly routine. I defend Lathen with
the contention that they are not interested in the mystery so much as the
characters in milieu of American high finance. We see this milieu through the
eyes of banker John Putnam Thatcher, who can laugh at the
absurd aspects of the situations in which he finds himself while he stoically
does his duty to his bank and his own integrity. The recurring characters are
satisfying. Charlie Trinkam charms the birds from the trees, Everett Gabler plays
the Doubting Thomas, and Tom Robichaux stands in as the epicure with impossibly
gorgeous trophy wives. Even Thatcher’s secretary, Miss Corsa, has her moments
while she disapproves, silently yet eloquently, of the jams Thatcher finds
himself in that take him from his work.
So, readers that don’t mind period
pieces will find satisfying characterization and witty dialogue in the Lathen
mysteries. Her world view is dry and wry. And like Perry Mason is the lawyer we
wish really existed, John Putnam Thatcher is the Wall Street magnifico we wish
worked on Wall Street. Between 1962 and 1997 (when Latsis passed away),
the Mary Jane Latsis and Martha Henissart, attorney-banker and economic analyst
respectively, wrote as many as 24 novels featuring Thatcher’s adventures.
