Emma Lathen, pseudonym of Mary J. Latsis (c.1917– ) and Martha, Henissart (c.1929– ) Biography

the American authors of a series of detective stories, beginning with Banking on Death (1961), in which the central figure is John Putnam Thatcher, senior vice-president of the Sloan Guaranty Trust in New York. The plots, which usually turn on some point of financial fraud or chicanery, obviously owe much to the authors' experiences: Latsis has been an economist, working for the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation in Rome, and Henissart was employed in corporate banking and finance. The best of their many novels are perhaps Accounting for Murder (1964), Death Shall Overcome (1966), Murder Makes the Wheels Go Round (1966), Come to Dust (1968), and Ashes to Ashes (1971). Under the name of R. B. Dominic they have also written a less successful series with a political background (Murder Sunny Side Up, 1968; The Attending Physician, 1980).