Awesome / John Putnam Thatcher

• Thatcher's Screw the Rules, I Have Connections! gambit to secure information about a killer from an airport employee by touting his seat on the airline's board of directors in the first book. And he may have been bluffing about that.
• Curmudgeonly old trusts officer Everett Gabler can really shine when he contributes to Thatcher's investigations, such as when he tricks the killer into making an incriminating mistake while posing as a house hunter in Pick Up Sticks or when he notices the Absence of Evidence that the police forensic accountants missed in Something in the Air.
• The arrest of Smug Snake white supremacist Owen Abercrombie after he pulls a gun at an NAACP meeting. The target of his threats being the one to painful knock the gun out of his hands is icing on the cake.
• A Badass Bystander decking the fleeing killer in Death Shall Overcome.
• It can occasionally be hard to tell whether Recurring Character Paul Jackson is a Crusading Lawyer or an Amoral Attorney, but A Stitch in Time and Brewing Up a Storm both have him give less sympathetic opposing parties just enough rope to hang themselves and score a decisive admission or victory that would do Perry Mason proud.
  • In Green Grow the Dollars, Jackson's clients pull this off while he's Locked Out of the Loop during a heated legal battle over which company is responsible for the creation of a revolutionary tomato. Jackson's clients wheel out a tomato tree far more advanced than anything their opponents have and feed delicious samples to everyone involved in the case to prove that they've clearly made advances far ahead of their competitors. Additionally, they did this with just one scientist, a few interns, and a budget that came from their leader mortgaging his house, while the person stealing from them couldn't outpace their progress with the budget and laboratories of a MegaCorp.
• Dr. Knox's Rousing Speech in A Stitch in Time, lambasting the hospital's board of trustees for allowing so much corruption to go on under their noses, and dictating the actions that they'll need to take to punish the malefactors and start fresh.
• When in Greece has a member of the right-wing cabal which has just installed a military dictatorship in Greece try to frame the bankers for financing leftist rebels so that he can nationalize their assets. They turn this around by pointing out that the evidence (plus some additional stuff that they've faked) can be used to make it look like he's a leftist rebel, and then discuss how "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word.
  • Ken Nicolls, who comes across as a bit of an unlucky bumbler in many of his appearances, spends most of the book on the run from sinister elements of the Greek military and doing a good job of staying out of their hands despite having no resources and not knowing what's going on.
  • Everett is almost completely unfazed after being captured and questioned by left-wing rebels after the MacGuffin, manages to drug their food, and escapes out a second-story window.
• Murder to Go has the killer exposed during a court hearing where a guest character in the loop gets a chance to beautifully lead up to The Reveal with a series of questions. That book also reveals that the cops had zeroed in on the culprit some time ago and might have solved the case without Thatcher's help.
• Unionist Annie Galiano has her moments throughout The Longer the Thread. First, there's her dressing down of ivory tower radical Prudencio Nadal and Sleazy Politician Dr. Ramirez after they endanger a bunch of jobs. Then, at the end of the book, there's the way she tricks the company that she's cooperating with into opening two day-care centers for their workers instead of the agreed upon one.
• Sal Ianello's Papa Wolf Rousing Speech in Ashes to Ashes when a bomb explodes after hours in his neighborhood's school (which is the subject of a big debate regarding its scheduled demolition for gentrification of the area).
• Any time in Sweet and Low where elderly commodities broker Armory Shaw puts his client Howard Vandevanter (who is genuinely skilled in many areas but is pretty demanding in areas he's ignorant about as well) in his place after Howard makes unpalatable demands or suggestions. Howard talks about how his company, Dreyer Chocolate, has a seat on the board of the Cocoa Exchange that gives him the power to make demands aimed at the whole profession. Shaw triumphantly says that it's his seat, not Dreyer's, and has been since before he started working for Howard's predecessor. He agrees that his office mainly works for Dreyer but "either I run my operation independently, or I don't run it at all", and that if Howard (who is the appointed president of the company and can be removed by the board) doesn't like that, then the company will have to decide which one of them it can afford to lose, and he doubts that it will be him.
• In Sweet and Low, a methodical small-town cop lays out the deduction that Thatcher later uses to narrow down the correct suspect, and then quickly finds proof when Thatcher first asks if that person could be guilty. He also confidently derides the culprit's unconvincing attempt at denying the truth, saying that "You left a trail a mile wide."
• Going for the Gold
  • Both Thatcher and the book's police investigator pick up on three suspicious and inconsistent statements to explore from their first conversation with the witnesses, as shown in a good Awesome by Analysis conversation the two investigators have.
  • A trap for a suspect who's been stealing Olympic supplies hits a snag when he impressively blocks off the police (and, less impressively, his accomplice), from pursuing him by filling the road with the stolen supplies. Then he speeds off on a snowmobile and is only caught due to mistaking the arriving Everett (who has traveled miles through a snowstorm in Intrepid Merchant fashion) for another cop, making him think he's surrounded.
  • When a Swiss athlete is framed for doping, an Obstructive Bureaucrat disqualifies her without even listening to the persuasive arguments about why her claims of innocence are true. Consequently, her teammates hijack the controls to the official's gondola and leave him stranded halfway up the mountain, forcing him to listen to them (at which point he genuinely realizes they have some good points). They add that if he sets the authorities on them, they'll read a carefully-crafted statement denouncing the Olympic committee's scapegoating of their teammate to the assembled reporters. The ringleader's matter-of-fact, innocent-sounding Tranquil Fury as he begins forming the plan adds to the hilarity and awesomeness.
  Bernard: The IOC has said there is no benefit to be derived from a discussion with us. Remembering that they are quite dense, we must simply create a situation in which the benefits are self-apparent.
  • The climax has a relatively derided Olympian do a great bit of downhill skiing to stop the killer from sniping a second victim (the Olympian's girlfriend Tilly), then chasing the killer down with just one ski pole when his adversary tries to flee. This is followed by a a drawn-out brawl as the two of them roll down hill together after he tackles the killer, a brawl which he wins. Adding to the moment is how being shot at helps motivate Tilly to go even faster (she's competing herself at the time) and set a new world record.
  Finishing 35th in a field of 36 still let him ahead of almost everybody else in the world.
• Green Grows the Dollars has a scene where Howard Pendleton approaches a rival scientist to be one of three neutral expert observers in a legal dispute over an invention that both Howard and Scott Wenzel are claiming to have invented. Howard knows that the guy is likely to refuse out of spite if he asks him outright. Howard instead cleverly talks about how he's already decided on two renowned figures who his rival wants to be associated with. Then he casually asks, "But where in the world am I supposed to find a third man of that caliber?" before changing the subject. His rival immediately grabs the bait. As Scott produces more evidence, it gradually becomes clear that Howard is either a dupe or a thief (and possibly a murderer), but at that moment, it's hard not to be impressed by him.
  • Similarly, there's a scene in the book where Howard reads his corporate associates the riot act and accuses them of playing him for a fool before cutting ties with them. Granted, it's later revealed he's doing this more as a calculating show to demonstrate his own innocence and plant some Ideas into their heads that make him look better than out of genuine righteous outrage, but that just shifts the awesomeness of the moment into The Chessmaster territory.
  As Pendelton paused to draw breath, Dick Vandam inconsequently noticed how deceiving looks could be. Pendleton was not a tall, tweedy scientist but a human battering ram.
• Something in the Air has one of the suspects figuring out who the real killer is, gathering evidence, and intimidating the culprit into a confession without any direct help from Thatcher or the police.
• In Something in the Air, Eleanor Gough shedding her status as a Yes-Man and lecturing her senior partner about the many flaws of his overly ambitious expansion plan.
• One of Thatcher's subordinates chasing after a motorcycle-riding killer in the climax of East is East.
• A Shark Out of Water has both Thatcher and a Badass Bureaucrat figure out the killer and motive around the same time, with the bureaucrat also revealing that she'd taken pains to avoid a Have You Told Anyone Else? scenario by mailing copies of all her evidence as her investigation progressed.