Customer Reviews

A Shark Out of Water: A John Thatcher Mystery (G K Hall Large Print Book Series)

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The latest John Putnam Thatcher book continues the trend of focusing less on Thatcher and his fellow bank associates, and more on third party participants in the murder and mayhem going on around Thatcher. The European locale adds flavor to the plot; the internal politics of a unified western Europe organization makes for interesting reading. Readers know what to expect from Ms. Lathen, and will not be dissapointed. Hopefully the series will continue despite the death of one of the two co-authors using the Emma Lathen pseudonym.

An environmental disaster has struck Germany^Rs Kiel Canal whena fogcauses numerous collisions and oil spills. Due to the accident and the high degree of shipping through the canal, the German government is thinking of taking out a loan to rebuild and widen the canal. The myriad of insurance claims that follow the aftermath and the potential German project are both being handled through the Baltic Area Development Association (BADA). Wall Street, ever interested in a good deal, dispatches John Putnam Thatcher to Gdansk, Poland to learn whether it pays to invest in the canal renovation deal.

However, the simple business transaction takes a nasty turn when a BADA official claims to have uncovered fraud within the organization. Immediately after the announcement, the official^Rs battered corpse is found and the murder of his lover shortly follows. The Polish police officer Oblonski turns to Thatcher to help him muddle through the world of international finance to uncover the identity of a fiscal murderer.

A SHARK OUT OF WATER is the twenty-third book in the Thatcher series and surprisingly with all of those novels, the current story is a refreshing tale. Thatcher is a great character and the story line is filled with self deprecating irony as Emma Lathen laughs at the slapstick efforts of governments and international corporations capitalization of the former Soviet Union. The who-done-it is well written, but it is the intricate glimpses into the wacky, weird, almost mystical, world of international finance that turns this into another great Thatcher novel. Harriet Klausner

Sadly, this was the last book in what is, for me, one of the wittiest, best-written, classiest, downright finest series of mysteries. Emma Lathen was the pseudonym of two writers who, amazingly, wrote alternate chapters. Lathen sets her stories in locations and situations in which John Putnam Thatcher, bank vice-president, can plausibly be at the center of the action. In this book he is in Europe for a Baltic economic association meeting. Boring? Confusing? Not in Lathen's hands. Tensions, well-etched characters, murders forecast and unexpected, an excellent solution, shrewd and often very funny observations on people and life, distinguish all Lathen's books, from the first ,Banking on Death, to Shark out of Water. Ideally you should read the series from the beginning, but any one of them is great. Buy, read, and enjoy.

There is so much boring detail that I could hardly finish this book. Ever since Lathen turned John Thatcher into a minor character in this series, the books have been dull.