YMMV / Arthur Hailey

• Older Than They Think: In The Moneychangers, the massive fraud of the Sunatco company eerily mirrors that of future corporations like Enron in how they hide their financial woes via loans and fraudulent bookkeeping. However, the book makes it clear this is an old standard in business. One character openly compares Sunatco to how the Penn Central railroad fell apart as the company had been seen as one of the safest stocks to hold and, virtually overnight, was in receivership.
• Shown Their Work: A key reason Hailey's novels were so popular was the immense amount of research he put into them and detailing it for readers to understand. The Moneychangers alone sums up complex issues of banking, the stock market, counterfeiting, fraud and credit cards (which were still new in 1975).
• Technology Marches On: Several works are clearly outdated from air traffic control to bank computer systems to how news shows were produced in the late 1980s.
• Values Dissonance: Happens a few times with his works having been written in the 1960s and '70s.
  • Hotel has a subplot involving the New Orleans-set St. Gregory being segregated. This comes up when a black dentist is banned from a meeting and incites a huge controversy. One character notes the "talk on state's rights" which shows how different it was.
  • In a new foreword for a 1990s reprint of Hotel, Hailey tells younger readers that the constant use of "Negro" is not meant as an insult but how black people were referred to at the time. He adds that he regrets how nearly every character is shown smoking as the dangers weren't as well-known in the '60s.
  • Several of the viewpoints on casual sex show how different things were in the pre-AIDS era.