Banking on Death by Emma Lathen

A new and rather complicated trust case was presented to John Putnam Thatcher, head of the Sloan National Bank trust department, when Arthur Schneider came to his office to protest the handling of the Schneider Trust by Ken Nicolls who was in charge of the trust. It seemed that Nicolls was not working fast enough to settle one important issue. One of the beneficiaries of the trust was missing.

The Schneider trust had been established in 1932 by Klaus Arthur Schneider for the benefit of his grandchildren. The initial ten thousand dollars invested had now grown to three hundred thousand dollars. (This was in 1961). The trust was payable to the grandchildren when the last of Klaus Schneider's children died. The last child was now on her deathbed with not much longer to live. On her death, Arthur Schneider, Jr. and Grace Walworth, his sister, would each receive fifty thousand dollars. Martin Henderson would receive one hundred thousand, and C. Robert Schneider would receive one hundred thousand. The big problem was that Robert Schneider had disappeared several years before and nobody had heard from him since. If Robert Schneider was dead with no children, his money would be distributed to the other three family members. So far Ken Nicolls had failed to find out what had happened to him.

Thatcher found the needed information at a lunch with a friend who urged the Sloan to invest in Buffalo Industrial Products. Thatcher found out the clever person who had come up with a new and valuable technology at this company was none other than C. Robert Schneider. Then Thatcher and Nicolls found out that  C. Robert Schneider had been murdered shortly before they had started looking for him.

Thatcher cannot resist his urge to get involved in a murder investigation which will take him to Buffalo where he found that Robert was a generally irritating person who was disliked by his coworkers, and separated from his wife who was quite short of money. Robert did have two children who would come under of the supervision of the trust department of the Sloan since they would each inherit fifty thousand dollars from the trust which gave Thatcher even more reason to involve himself in finding the murderer of Robert Schneider.

Though this all may seem rather complicated, it all works out in the end, of course. I am a great fan of John Putnam Thatcher and these financial mysteries of Emma Lathen. He is a sane, rational detective and pursues his investigations in a reasonable and logical manner.

This book was published in 1961, and it was the first book in the John Putnam Thatcher series. Used copies are still available.