Right on the Money: Emma Lathen

John Putnam Thatcher #20

by Emma Lathen, Deaver Brown (Editor)

A merger & acquisition mystery where an Assistant Division Manager of the acquiring company wants the Division Manager job of the acquired company but has the wrong skill set. The fun starts there and John Putnam Thatcher solves it.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction

318 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Aka R.B. Dominic

Emma Lathen is the pen name of two American businesswomen: an attorney Mary Jane Latsis (July 12, 1927 -October 29, 1997) and an economic analyst Martha Henissart (b. 1929),who received her B.A. in physics from Mount Holyoke College in 1950.

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/10/31/boo...

Reviews

[Joy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Conrad Ecker, powerhouse appliance inventor, and his son Douglas, powerhouse businessman, have taken the small Ecker Company to the heights of reputation and reliability. Now, with age and ill health impinging on them, Conrad announces he is going to sell the company to Aqua Systems, Inc. This does not sit well with the family who work for them company. It also sits poorly with a significant portion of ASI. Amid the convulsions on both sides, one nasty little assistant manager ends up murdered. John Thatcher of the Sloan, the bank financing ASI, is in for some surprises before he sorts out who among the main parties has been misbehaving.

I loved the author's zingers. I do have a caveat: I think the corporate cultures at the two companies are going to be incompatible. The Ecker employees have been treated right, and ASI has too much backbiting and corporate infighting. Personally, if I were at Ecker, I would start job hunting.

Read 2 times

[Lisa Kucharski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ah the humor returns, and Ken Nichols is back in the picture... he's a fave character of mine from the Sloan. Thatcher and team work hard to watch the world of business and help a merger form, however...in this case merge begets murder.

Fun story, I like the fact that absolutely no one was upset or even concerned about the murder victim.. "he was lucky he made it to 32."

A great deal of the humor I saw in the earlier mysteries is back in high form here in this story. Interesting as there are only two more in this series to go.

[Teri-K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably only Emma Lathen could write a mystery about two kitchen appliance companies merging and make it exciting, puzzling, and satisfying. Business may be murder, but when a larger company offers to buy out Ecker, a family owned business whose success is based solely on the inventive genius of it's aging founder, no one really expects anybody to die. Still, through murder, infighting, arson and audits, John Thatcher continues to use his intelligence to solve the case. It's a excellent entry in a series that rarely disappoints.

[Vicki Cline · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like the Thatcher mystery series because it feels like I learn something about a different kind of business with each one. This is one of the last in the series, and Thatcher himself isn't much in evidence, but the auxiliary characters are interesting, as are the machinations for and against the merger that is the center of the plot.

[Helen Fleischer · Rating 3 out of 5]

standard stuff, no sizzle

[Katherine Spivey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Always something to learn in the John Putnam Thatcher series.

[Jean Bonilla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good fun. Reminds me a lot of work!