Right on the money - Hardcover

Emma Lathen:

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0575056010 ISBN 13: 9780575056015

Publisher: Victor Gollancz, 1993

Synopsis

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.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

This 22nd John Putnam Thatcher financial mystery is an enjoyable--and understandable--puzzler drawing on the intricacies of corporate mergers. When ASI, an upscale, stratified water fixture manufacturer, begins merger negotiations with the mom-and-pop Ecker operation, ASI assistant division manager Victor Hunnicut fears he may soon be squeezed out. To get in on the action, he finagles a way to stand in for his boss in the negotiations but then makes a mess of his tour of Ecker, giving himself airs and spreading unsubstantiated rumors about internal dissension at both ASI and Ecker. Soon after the tour, the building that housed Ecker's financial records and test lab files goes up in flames and Hunnicut is murdered at the annual trade show. Thatcher, a senior vice-president at Wall Street's Sloan Guaranty Trust, which oversees Ecker's finances, works with the police to unravel the numerous scams and schemes. Even readers who don't understand merger financing will enjoy this inside look (Emma Lathen is a pen name shared by an economist and a lawyer), the brisk, smart dialogue and the credible solution to the crime.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

A merger between private-label manufacturer Aqua Supplies, Inc. (ASI), and the Ecker Company, a mom-and-pop client of the Sloan Guaranty Trust, whose main asset is pop Conrad Ecker's uncanny knack for developing small kitchen appliances, is threatened by a suspicious fire in Ecker's record room--and then by meddlesome ASI underling Victor Hunnicut, whose paranoid determination to scuttle the merger ends only when he's skewered during a Manhattan trade show. The police start by going after Conrad's slow-horse production manager, Bob Laverdiere, whose wife Tina had overseen the books that were toasted, and then, finding no flaw in Ecker's finances, they focus on the nervous upper echelons at ASI--but it naturally takes the Sloan's genial veteran John Putnam Thatcher to spot the cleverly concealed culprit. Not as high-concept as Thatcher's recent outings (East is East, 1991, etc.), but with more memorable characters and counterplots. Above average for this blue-chip series. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Victor Gollancz
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0575056010
• ISBN 13: 9780575056015
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256