Books and Films In A Corporate Setting
 

          With corporate crime making headlines, it seems a good time to write a mystery set in a business organization, and that’s where my second mystery takes place.  Meanwhile, I’m reading not only fiction, including mysteries, but also nonfiction. I’ve also viewed films taking place in the business world.  Here are some I liked:

        Books

Blake, Nicholas.  End of Chapter, 1988     (Publishing)

Brenner, Marie, “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” Vanity Fair, May, 1996  (Tobacco).

Burroughs, Bryan and John Helyar, Barbarians At The Gate, 1991.  (Finance, Food, Tobacco)

James, P.D. Original Sin, 1982  (Publishing)

Neel, Janet, Death’s Bright Angel, 1988  (Textiles.  The first novel in an interesting series.)

Films 

Jordan, Glenn, Director.  Barbarians at the Gate, 1993 (Finance, Food, Tobacco) 

Mayor, Michael, Director.  The Insider, 1999 (Tobacco) 

Nicholl, Mike, Working Girl, 1988 (Finance) 

Stone, Oliver, Wall Street, 1987(Finance)
 

 
 

I didn’t find many novels I liked, and I think I know why.  First, this type of book seems to date sooner than other kinds of mysteries; I enjoyed the Emma Lathen series featuring banker John Putnam Thatcher when I first read them, but when I reread them recently, they seemed old-fashioned.  Meanwhile, corporate crime has become so outrageous, fiction writers haven’t caught up with reality.  A handful of films where the characters once seemed like caricatures (Gordon Gecko: “Greed is good!”) now seem almost like ordinary guys compared to contemporary real-life corporate criminals.  What can fictional characters do that those thugs at Enron didn’t do?