Banking on Death: Emma Lathen

Why did I reread this book? Because the John Putnam Thatcher series by Emma Lathen is one of my favorite series of mystery novels. And why now? Because the story is set around Christmas. Very little of the story relates to Christmas, but I did enjoy all the references to Christmas, some of which I will share here.

John Putnam Thatcher, senior vice president and director of the trust department of Sloan Guaranty Trust, is the protagonist of this series totaling 24 books. Most of the books are focused on one type of business that is using the services of the Sloan, and the story shares many facts about the running of the specific types of businesses. But in this first book, the focus is on the business of the Sloan, the third largest bank in the world. And the issue that starts the story is a query into the status of a small trust that the Sloan has been managing for close to thirty years.

The Sloan has been approached because a trust will soon be dispersed due to the expected death of the last living child of the man who set up the trust. The grandchildren who will benefit from the trust are trying to locate one of the heirs, who has not been heard of for many years. When the lost heir, Robert Schneider, is located, he has been dead for two weeks. There are many suspects, some in the business that the heir worked for, others among the family members who will get his portion of the trust. Why does the Sloan get involved? Because Robert Schneider has children and the institution has a responsibility to protect the rights of all the potential beneficiaries. And because Thatcher enjoys a puzzle and can't let it go.

The story starts a few weeks before Christmas but really gets moving on Christmas eve, at a lunch with Tom Robichaux, where Thatcher makes the connection between two firms that produce industrial textiles, one of which employs the missing heir.

Neither sentiment nor business prompted Thatcher and Robichaux to eat a protracted lunch at the Harvard Club each December twenty-fourth. They were merely avoiding the dislocations that the preparation of inevitable Christmas festivities at their respective institutions entailed. And, if possible, parts of the festivities themselves; Robichaux because he preferred to conduct a strenuous social life in more appropriate surroundings, Thatcher because he found office parties embarrassing and somehow pathetic.

Later there is a brief description of the Christmas holiday that each continuing character at the Sloan experienced. My favorite is Miss Corsa's holiday.

For example, Rose Theresa Corsa was forced to sandwich into thirty hours an incredible number of activities. She participated in an office party, every detail of which had to be recounted to two younger sisters; she attended midnight Mass; she rendered prodigious culinary assistance to her mother; she sat down with a large group of relatives to a high holiday feast which stubbornly combined all the elements of classical Neapolitan cookery with those of a traditional American Christmas Day dinner; and she reviewed the day's events with her closest friend, Maria Angelus. The result of this hilarious round of activity was that she failed to prepare her wardrobe for the following day and arrived at her office one hour late for the first time in four years.

I don't usually care for mystery plots featuring amateur sleuths, and finally I have discovered why this series works for me. In Whodunit?: A Who's Who in Crime & Mystery Writing by Rosemary Herbert, John Putnam Thatcher is described as a prime example of the surrogate detective.

The term “surrogate detective” is applied to characters who solve crimes yet who are neither amateur nor professional detectives. Like the accidental sleuth, the surrogate sleuth may simply have stumbled upon the crime scene, but whereas the accidental sleuth acts out of pluckiness or sometimes self-defense in order to prove who committed the crime, the surrogate sleuth feels compelled to act by applying expertise that he or she brings to the situation.

Thatcher fits this definition by virtue of his financial expertise, and he can often connect motives and behavior to business practices. Other examples are sleuths with a related knowledge of science, and journalists who can gain access to characters.

Emma Lathen's novels are often described as "dated" and this one is especially so, since it was published in 1961. When Thatcher wants to find out information about a death in another city, he sends someone on his staff to the Library to borrow all the papers for that city over the requested time frame. Certainly the world is much different now. Instead of typewriters we have computers and the internet makes information much more readily available. Secretaries have now been replaced by Administrative Assistants, acknowledging the importance of the service they provide. I would not say I want to go back to these times at all. But I like to read books, and especially mystery novels, written in earlier times. Offices, living conditions, and attitudes of the 60s, 70s and 80s are interesting. The John Putnam Thatcher series span several decades, starting in 1961 and ending in 1997, showing a progression.

I loved this book. It had been years since I had read it, and I was surprised that this first book in the series was so good. Like the Rex Stout Nero Wolfe series, all the main characters are well-defined from the beginning of the series. This book had all of the wonderful qualities that I remember, and introduces many continuing characters (Tom Robichaux, Charlie Trinkham, Ken Nicolls, Miss Corsa).  Although it is Thatcher that holds the story together in each book, the viewpoint moves from character to character, giving the reader a broad picture of the plot. Even minor characters are vividly described. To top it off, this book had a very satisfactory ending.

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Publisher:   Pocket Books, 1975 (orig. pub. 1961)
Length:      193 pages
Format:      Paperback
Series:       John Putnam Thatcher, #1
Setting:      New York
Genre:        Mystery
Source:      I purchased my copy.