Murder to Go

Living up to her remarkable talent for combining murder with big business, Miss Lathen this time leads us skillfully behind the scenes of a million-dollar chain of "take-out" restaurants called Chicken Tonight-suspected of being the source of an epidemic of food poisoning on the East Coast. The Sloan Guaranty Trust has $12 million riding on Chicken Tonight. To save it from sure bankruptcy, Sloan's senior vice president, John Putnam Thatcher, is dispatched to the scenes of CT's offending test kitchens, franchise shambles and front-office despair. Fiscal misery is soon compounded by panic when it is discovered that the poisonings were deliberate and that a mass poisoner is still at large. Thatcher meets Frank Hedstrom and Ted Young, the brilliant young co-operators of CT, who seldom see eye to eye and whose internecine quarrels are bitter and frequent, leading Thatcher to suspect sabotage. But the discovery of a strangled corpse-a former CT employee found far from the base of operations-swells the list of suspects to a confusing number. With the unwitting help of a Wall Street crony (the much-divorced Tom Robi¬chaux), with the witting and shrewd help of a Mr. Denton (of the U.S. Public Health Service), and with an excellent profile of the murder victim (supplied by Captain Stotz of the New Jersey police), Thatcher eventually effects a dramatic confrontation with the one person callous enough to jeopardize the lives of hundreds to serve his own corruptness. Murder to Go, with its milling cast of characters, its ingenious plotting and its colorfully detailed background of financial legerdemain, is a bonus for Thatcher fans and a delightful discovery for those who are about to be introduced to him.