Emma Lathen

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.

I have read and enjoyed all of the John Putnam Thatcher books, and enjoyed them very much. They are clever and amusing. This, however, was a great disappointment. The writing is really incompetent, and there is no mystery. It is written in short declarative sentences, the punctuation is messed up in places, there are the sort of errors that spellcheck won't catch but a real copy editor would have (dosing instead of dozing, color instead of collar), it mostly focused on talking about how show more beautiful and awesome Elizabeth is and how everyone loves her so much instead of having an actual plot, and I loathe what they do with the Sloan Guaranty Trust, even assuming it were possible. I am going to pretend this book never happened, lest it mar an otherwise delightful series. 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

An old series, but a good one, featuring Wall Street banker John Thatcher. Thatcher is all business, but his business keeps involving him in situations where there are murders to unravel, and wrongs to right. In this one, our hero has gone out to Detroit to evaluate the business of Michigan Motors, but things get complicated when one of the firm's senior managers gets killed. A strong sense of place (banking used to be different) and an undertone of humor add to the pleasures of this series.