Mary Jane Latsis and Martha Henissart, attorney-banker
and economic analyst respectively, had to write under the pen name of Emma
Lathen, lest their Wall Street superiors and colleagues take umbrage. Heaven knows
they’d be put out, wondering if they were the models for delicate
male egos and whiny babies that posture as formidable captains of industry. For
instance, in this one, a composed secretary has learned to bring her boss, the
president of a computer company, what he, an ex-quarterback for Harvard to boot,
craves most in times of stress: a glass of milk.
In this 1964 mystery, an accountant is found strangled
with his own adding machine cord. He was an outsider that was hired by a pack
of disgruntled stockholders so there are plenty of suspects inside the company.
Series hero John Putnam Thatcher, senior VP for Sloan Guaranty Trust, an
investment banking concern, is dragged into the investigation because his bank
is heavily and foolishly invested in the data processing company. As in comic
mysteries generally, Thatcher, though canny and quick-thinking, finds himself
haplessly caught in zany situations. I can’t assert that the humor is of the
LOL - knee-slapping variety, but readers who savor James Thurber’s quiet
satirical bomb-throwing will enjoy dry and wry Emma Lathan. In fact, in 1965
this novel was a runner-up for the Golden Dagger Award given by the Crime
Writers Association, taking second to the still-readable The Far Side of the Dollar by John Macdonald.
Between 1962 and 1997 (when Latsis passed away), the duo
wrote as many as 24 novels featuring Thatcher’s adventures. They are marked by
highly literate writing, genial satire of Wall Street and the business world of
Madmen, and concise descriptions of
how business used to deal with government contracts, logistics, R&D,
and production in those bygone days when our financial titans actually focused on investing
in making things instead of crashing the housing market.
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