Emma Lathen

Substance: Why are so many people fighting over a hockey team? Thatcher follows the money to find out.
A great slice-of-life from NYC in the 1970s, and an education in financial affairs.

Style: Sometimes Lathen's wit is a bit too oblique, and her characters sometimes seem to be refugees from a sit-com, but the clues are fair and the deduction legitimate.
PG only because most kids can't follow the finance, and wouldn't want to; never embarrassing.

One of the best American mystery series comes to an end with a sort of thud. At her (or rather their) best, Emma Lathen approached a story with a light touch and made each novel's theme more comprehensible. This novel, set mostly in Poland, deals with shipping in the Baltic region and the new Europe. The subject is complicated and needs so much explanation that the characters and story get a little lost. When a shipping disaster closes the Kiel Canal at a time when its renovation is under show more discussion, a canal supervisor is murdered when he discovers irregularities. John Putnam Thatcher and Everett Gabler, in Poland to investigate the renovation financing, are caught in the chaos and must find the clever land shark who may kill again. show less

This was like a pint of lager after a moderate walk on a sunny day. Satisfying, functional, and welcome in the moment, with almost no lingering impression. I finished it a few days ago and I’m already struggling to recall details. It’s a fairly tight whodunnit leavened by light-comic digressions and irrelevancies, none of which get too out of hand. The tone is light and even without being whimsical. There are some annoying tics to the writing, but mostly it sails along smoothly enough. show more It’s the kind of book which you’d be happy to pick up for three quid second-hand for the purpose of whiling away a long train journey.

None of this is criticism. Smooth reads that will nicely fill a few hours without taxing you too much are great things. I am slightly baffled, though, that such a book could possibly have been the best crime novel published in 1967. Perhaps the prize-givers wanted a relaxing year after having to deal with Davidson last time round.

A slightly mysterious extra-textual coda: my (second-hand) copy of the book is a horrible object, very cheaply made, apparently typeset in Word. It seems that the rights to the Lathen books may have been bought by an unscrupulous pseudo-publisher, who is producing both these disgusting editions of the originals and apparently appalling new books under the Lathen name (one is described in the front matter of my book. It does indeed sound dreadful). This here blog gives more sordid background: https://thepassingtramp.blogspot.com/2018/01/simply-troubling-mystery-of-new-emm... show less

My favorite of the John Putnam Thatcher series, which chronicles the senior banker's all too frequent (if unintended) involvements with crime. In this one, a junior banker has been sent to Greece to negotiate a loan, and has disappeared in the wake of a simultaneous earthquake and revolution, Thatcher and some of his senior colleagues end up going to Greece to find their young associate, and complications multiply. This one is laugh out loud funny.