Emma Lathen

>Dispatched to Gdansk, Poland, on the western Baltic, on the rumor that an excellent investment opportunity might arise - the possibility of rebuilding the Kiel Canal - John Putnam Thatcher finds himself in the midst of two quite extraordinary events. >The first is the complete chaos that ensues when the canal, little-publicized but the carrier of more traffic than any other such body in the world, becomes completely snarled on a foggy night, with hundreds of boats, small and large, blindly stumbling every which way within the crowded basin. Dramatic as that is, the other event affects our friend more personally: an official of BADA, the Baltic Area Development Association, is found murdered in the aftermath of a champagne party.

Quax, a nonalcoholic beer, becomes the center of a political feud when a nineteen-year-old dies in a drunken car wreck. Kischel Brewery has created Quax as a nonalcoholic alternative to its popular beers. NOBBY, No Beer-Buying Youngsters, a grassroots organization asserting that nonalcoholic beer primes youngsters for premature alcohol abuse, takes the brewery to court. When Rugby's, a national fast-food chain, decides to sell Quax along with its burgers and fries, NOBBY finds further cause for alarm. Mrs. Madeline Underwood reigns tireless and fierce at the helm of NOBBY's campaign against the fast-food chain. The political figures she has found to champion NOBBY's cause grow weary as Mrs. Underwood's stance becomes increasingly extreme. Her abrasive style succeeds in escalating NOBBY's protest of Rugby's in Manhattan into a full-scale riot. As tempers and egos flare, Mrs. Underwood is murdered. It becomes clear that in spite of her noble cause, she succeeded in alienating and antagonizing even her supporters. Suspects are in no short supply. Kischel Brewery is an important client of Thatcher's bank, so the case falls into his capable hands. Trying to make sense of this nonalcoholic storm, Thatcher uncovers an intoxicating cover-up.

Typical John Putnam Thatcher novel, this time about a small appliance company considering merging (being swallowed by) a larger company. Usual cast, with interesting additions. Not as much recondite insider knowledge as usual, but enough for the reader to learn something. A good read.

A young Japanese seaman, inspired by dreams of the City of Brotherly Love and trained in the way of the samurai, jumps ship off the coast of Georgia.

> The Vandam Nursery & Seed Company could feel justly proud of Numero Uno - their new tomato was a miracle of genetic engineering. But then another firm claimed the wonder-tomato was their idea, and a legal wrangle turned into a murderous dispute. It takes the banker's mind of John Thatcher to uncover the tangled roots of crime.

Mary Jane Latsis and Martha Henissart wrote 24 books under the pen name Emma Lathen and 7 as RB Dominic. This is one of the latter, starring Ohio congressman Ben Safford. This novel takes on Medicaid fraud, which was fairly rampant at the time. As usual, interesting cast of characters, and an inside look at the intricacies of Washington.

Why has Black Tuesday kidnapped an important American executive?

Meet the happy crafter who believes every mystery should be unraveled. Meet the happy crafter who believes every mystery should be unraveled.Molly Pink’s crochet group has a new mystery on their hands when they find a paper bag that contains a note that speaks of remorse, a diary entry of the sorrow of parting, and a complicated piece of filet crochet that offers an obscure clue in pictures. Things get even more complicated when they find the talented crocheter—murdered by a box of poisoned marzipan apples.

In 1966, the bastions of the New York financial district are rattled by an announcement from an old and well-established brokerage; for the first time in its history, Wall Street will have a black member of the Stock Exchange. That the candidate is well-educated, well-bred, and a multi-millionaire banker is not enough to soften the blow, and he is soon the target of two attempted murders. Lines are drawn, with one side headed up by unhinged businessman Owen Abercrombie (who wants all pinkos nuked and all Negroes sent back to Africa) and the other by a slick, self-aggrandizing African-American novelist who is milking the situation for all he can get. The fifth of Emma Lathen’s witty mysteries featuring elegant, urbane John Putnam Thatcher, senior vice president and head of the trust department at Sloan (third largest bank in the world) and a formidable ferreter-out of financial - and other - secrets. Although the language is dated, the characters and situation are not. The portrait of Ambercrombie, in particular, is eerily prescient.

For forty years, the Sloan Guaranty Trust has been administering the Schneider family trust. Now that the last of the Schneider siblings is dying, the heirs are pushing for a payout. All the ones that can be found, that is; black sheep grandson Robert came back from World war II and dropped out of sight, to everyone else’s relief. Sloan senior trust officer John Putnam Thatcher quickly learns that it would be very much in the family’s interest if Robert never reappeared. Throw into the mix a love nest, an estranged wife, a pending and potentially highly lucrative stock offering, and a very convenient blizzard, and Thatcher is faced with a murder that none of the suspects could possibly have committed. The first of Emma Lathen’s witty mysteries featuring elegant, urbane John Putnam Thatcher, senior vice president and head of the trust department at Sloan (third largest bank in the world) and a formidable ferreter-out of financial - and other - secrets.

The bittersweet story of an American family and its patriarch, a short-order cook named Ben Eisenstadt who, in the years after World War II, invented the sugar packet and Sweet'N Low, converting his Brooklyn cafeteria into a factory and amassing the great fortune that would destroy his family. A strange comic farce of machinations and double dealings, it is also the story of immigrants, sugar, saccharine, obesity, and the health and diet craze, played out across countries and generations but also within the life of a single family, as the fortune and the factory passed from generation to generation. The author, Rich Cohen, a grandson (disinherited, and thus set free, along with his mother and siblings), has sought the truth of this rancorous, colorful history, mining thousands of pages of court documents and conducting interviews with members of his extended family.--From publisher description.

John Putnam Thatcher, the formidable vice-president of Sloan Guaranty Trust, is torn, grudgingly, from his Wall Street eyrie to search for a stolen $50,000 bearer bond and to track down the puzzling Elliot Patterson, model suburban husband, father and thief. The bond was slated for the coffers of Brunswick College, Patterson's alma mater, and it is to Brunswick that Thatcher goes, where he is sure both bond and Patterson will emerge. Instead, he is confronted by a callous cover-up murder and the alarming knowledge that Patterson is still on the loose. Thatcher becomes deeply enmeshed in grand larceny and murder among the well-heeled alumni of an Ivy League school. However, for all his wry, detached view of the madness inherent in the groves of academe, he never forgets he is after a murderer. In the end, Thatcher has the last word - a conclusion that is stunning for its irony: there are, it seems, some actions that are worse than murder.

Murder Against the Grain won the Crime Writers Association's Gold Dagger Award in 1967. When a million-dollar bank robbery tips the new Soviet-American wheat treaty off-balance, Wall Street banker-detective John Putnam Thatcher steps in to even accounts with a thief dead set on Murder Against the Grain** John Putnam Thatcher, senior vice-president of the august Sloan Guaranty Trust, loathes crime, but crime has an ingenious way of seeking him out. This time he cannot by any means ignore it, for someone has had the effrontery to steal a million dollars from the Sloan itself. And to make matters worse, the missing million was a Russian down payment for American wheat. According to far too many public officials, it is John Thatcher's patriotic duty to avert an international crisis, even if it means that the Sloan is rooked. In a matter of days he is dutifully embroiled with the Secretary of State, the Soviet Embassy, eccentric wheat farmers, striking longshoremen, and a team of pugnacious Russian astronauts, as he gamely attempts to recover the money and rescue the faltering Soviet-American wheat treaty. Before Thatcher can get with the grain of the mystery, he has to answer some rather peculiar questions: What was the Cuban Navy doing in New York harbor? How did the American Potato Chip Institute become involved? Why was the Leningrad Symphony practicing on a basketball court? How on earth did a performing troupe of Russian otters that drink only vodka, dance the mazurka, and merrily assemble a three-stage rocket get into the picture? And above all, who, from the dizzying cast of characters, has assigned himself the role of grim reaper?

Before he could expose a big financial swindle, Clarence Fortinbras was interrupted. He always said that office life would kill him. Exit Fortinbras. Enter John Putnam Thatcher. Clarence Fortinbras is a revered name in the world of accounting; retired professor and author of the standard university textbook on accounts receivable, he is a man passionately in love with his chosen discipline. National Calculating Company is a struggling business-machine firm that has suffered several years in a row of falling profits and dividends. Self-appointed leader of a rogue stockholder’s group, Fortinbras is on a crusade to get to the bottom of any jiggery-pokery and obtains a court order allowing him to conduct a thorough audit of the company books. When he is found strangled with the cord to his own adding machine, National Calculating is plunged into a stock crisis and Sloan Guaranty Trust sends in senior banker John Putnam Thatcher in an attempt to stop a financial hemorrhage. What did Fortinbras find, and which company officer do those findings implicate? The list of suspects includes NCC's ineffectual and ulcer-riddled president, his ambitious nephew, the rival leaders of NCC's two business units, and the coolly cerebral female scientist who has a great deal more clout in the firm than her job title would suggest. The third of Emma Lathen’s witty mysteries featuring elegant, urbane John Putnam Thatcher, senior vice president and head of the trust department at Sloan (third largest bank in the world) and a formidable ferreter-out of financial - and other - secrets. Written in 1964, it reflects a time and an industry on the brink of the computer revolution.