John Putnam Thatcher is attending a Winter Olympics at Lake Placid (not the realm one) where his Sloan Guaranty Trust is providing the banking facilities. They see a star French skier shot and killed in mid jump, and shortly afterward learn the victim was apparently involved in a counterfeit travelers' check scheme that has taken half a million dollars from his bank. I had a vague memory I did not like this one the first time through, but so far I am enjoying rereading it. I notice a resemblance to Double, Double, Oil and Trouble in that the victim in ach s apparently involved in a major fraud ( )

43/2009. Emma Lathen, a pseudonym for two businesswomen, was quite popular with my parents' generation of mystery readers but this is my first. Nice local color on the Lake Placid Olympics, reasonable mystery structure with the culprit detectable but not easily detectable. The amateur detective, John Thatcher, has no personality, facilitating reader identification. Two flaws: I'm not sure how the traveler's check crime was supposed to profit the perpetrators. And Captain Ormsby appears without being introduced - editing glitch in paperback edition? (Bookmooched.)

Thatcher is called in when the Sloan is robbed of half a million dollars at the Lake Placid Olympics. Good setting, intriguing mystery.

CMB ( )