5. Come to Dust by Emma Lathen

This is where my sickness comes in.  I found this battered paperback in a free library box in Berkeley.  I took it purely on the Anthony Boucher pullquote.  I am literally piling books horizontally on top of my full on-deck shelf.  It's bad.

 I've never heard of Emma Latham.  This was an interesting read, an east coast establishment mystery where the main detector (I guess) is the president of a major bank.  His ally is the Chairman of the Board of the same bank.  The world is the elite establishment of NYC and New England in the late 60s pretty much Mad Men time.  It centers around a secondary and fictional Ivy League college and in particular its alumni fundraising organization.  One of its members, a particularly steady and thorough man, disappears on the way home to his perfect suburban house in Rye, along with a $50,000 bond certificate that was a donation from a wealthy widow of an alum.

A lot of the first half of the book follows the reputational damage to both the college and the fundraising organization and as we expect things get more and more complicated as it starts to become clear that this guy did not just run off with a young hussy or some other more expected scandal.  The two bankers, including the Chairman's competent and socially skilled wife at times, move among the various players, visiting the shattered wife at Rye, and having nice lunches at various clubs and restaurants.  There is a significant act during the big alumni weekend at the college itself and it is here where finally an actual murder takes place. 

It's a pleasant read, although a bit over written.  Latham uses adverbial phrases excessively and they weigh down the prose and could be confusing at times.  There were also a lot of white people with white people's names that I struggled to differentiate at times.  I did enjoy the inner perspective on the comfortable WASP bankers whose main concerns were not getting roped into dull conversations and the mystery itself was well constructed.  There is a very effective slight of hand or at least presentation of ideas that really worked to hide what was a seemingly obvious erroneous assumption throughout the book.  Also, the careful conservatism of the banking world, while stifling culturally, boy does seem welcome in today's financial cesspool.

Oh wow, I see now that this is a real series of 24 books, with John Putnam Thatcher (the banker) as detective, written by two professional women (who sounded quite successful even outside of the writing world).  I feel quite ignorant never having heard of these.  I may read another one if it crosses my path.

Now that's a well-travelled paperback!