When a small, profitable home appliance manufacturer and a large industrial manufacturer begin talking merger, all sorts of unsavory things begin to come out of the woodwork, many of them lured by a disgruntled young executive. When he is found dead with a skewer in chest, John Putnam Thatcher and his Sloane colleagues must find a murderer to save a customer's business. Most of the later JPT novels are a little bland, but this one, set at the Sloane and in New England, is almost as good of some of the earlier novels. ( )