John Putnam Thatcher #23

Brewing Up a Storm – Emma Lathen

Lots of activists are motivated by a vision of a more just, verdant, peaceful, prosperous world, but a few are driven by boredom and need for admiration. After her divorce and with nothing to do, empty nester Madelaine Underwood founded NOBBY, No Beer Buying Youngsters. NOBBY is campaigning against Quax, a nonalcoholic beer sold on the Coke and Pepsi shelves. NOBBY claims drinking Quax will lead kids to drinking Kix, the real beer made by the same brewer.

Mrs. Underwood is a narcissist who feels entitled to center stage. She has zero insight into or empathy for other players who have different views and interests. She has no focus for reading or studying facts and figures. In a congressional hearing she makes wild claims backed up only by stories. Lacking judgement of risks or opportunities in changing situations, she commits NOBBY to a lawsuit on behalf of a family they have not investigated. She foments a riot outside the Manhattan store of a hamburger chain that has decided to carry Quax and then she calmly leaves in a taxi as if she’s done nothing wrong.

I found the deep dive into who the victim was entertaining and instructive, though I grant it pushed the murder past the one-third mark and inflated the book to 300-plus pages. Lathen was the pen name of a  female writing team of an attorney and an economist. They wanted to remain anonymous because they thought their acerbic take-downs of executive behavior would offend their corporate clients.

She had a bead on how people think and act, not just titans of Wall Street but ordinary people as well. She describes the world of business, politics, and special interest groups  through the eyes of their series hero banker sleuth John Putnam Thatcher – curious, skeptical, bemused, and tolerant.

Written in the late 1990s, are the Thatcher mysteries dated? Sure, the sane tone alone makes them seem old-fashioned. But we can still enjoy her settings and plots and the indirect application of knowledge in organizational behavior and the psychology of anxiety.