Mary Jane Latsis (1917-1997) and Martha Henissart (1929-?) met at Harvard, where Latsis was taking graduate classes in economics and Henissart was attending law school. While they pursued careers in their respective fields in the early 1960s, their shared appreciation for crime fiction led them to undertake writing a mystery of their own. Because of their professional commitments, keeping their writing identities secret was essential and the author Emma Lathen was born. Together they created the character of John Putnam Thatcher, senior vice president of the Sloan Guaranty Trust, a major presence on Wall Street. They received the Gold Dagger award from the Crime Writers Association in 1967, the Ellery Queen award from the Mystery Writers Association in 1983, and the Agatha Award for Lifetime Achievement at the 1997 Malice Domestic conference.
A few years into the Thatcher series, they began publishing books about an Ohio congressman in Washington, D.C., under the pseudonym R. B. Dominic. Fantastic Fiction lists seven titles published between 1968 and 1983.
- Murder Sunny Side Up (1968)
- Murder in High Place (1969)
- There Is No Justice (1971) aka Murder out of Court
- Epitaph for a Lobbyist (1974)
- Murder Out of Commission (1976)
- The Attending Physician (1980)
- Unexpected Developments (1983)
In the second book Murder in High Place (Macmillan, 1969) Benton Safford, a Democrat representing Newburg, Ohio, in the U.S. House of Representatives, returns to his office after a long day of listening to speeches to find his staff being more or less held hostage as one of his constituents named Karen Kimball Jenks demands Safford’s assistance in returning to the South American nation of Nuevador so she can finish her cultural anthropology research. Jenks was tossed out of the country a few weeks earlier after photographs showing her in a bikini in the country’s national cathedral during Mass appeared on the front page of the Nuevador newspapers. Her contention that the photographs are faked becomes credible when she produces photos showing her in the same pose and outfit during a beach volleyball game.
Safford talks to representatives of the State Department, Nuevador, and the foundation that funded Karen’s work and convenes a meeting with all of them to try to sort through the situation. While awaiting the stragglers to arrive, a police officer stops in to say they cannot leave the room, that someone has fallen to his death from a window in their meeting room or one nearby. The victim turns out to be Philip Barnes, an economist who managed the Nuevador technical aid program with the United States. It soon becomes apparent that Barnes had suffered a lethal blow before he fell from the window, turning the cause of death from accident to murder.
Safford makes a pleasantly intelligent detective, quite like John Putnam Thatcher. While the eccentric series characters have not been established as of this book, some possibles for the job are introduced here.
As might be expected of mysteries devised by a lawyer and an economist, the motive is inevitably related to money. The applicable phrase is always cui bono, not cherchez le femme. It’s easy to overlook this maxim because the personalities are so compelling but in the end the dollar is what counts. And as usual in a mystery concocted by Hennisart and Latsis, the exposure of the culprit is completely unexpected.
Recommended for anyone who loved the Emma Lathen books, which is likely to be most mystery readers over the age of forty.