YMMV / John Putnam Thatcher

• Catharsis Factor: Racist Rabble Rouser Owen Abercrombie getting painfully disarmed and then hauled off by the police when he brandishes a gun at an African-American stockbroker is a highlight of Death Shall Overcome.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Pete Nicolls (The Baby of the Bunch among the Sloan bankers) and Lucy Lancer (the "witty and perceptive" wife of the chairman of the board) only have a few major roles before being Demoted to Extra, but are among the most popular protagonists for many fans.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In Death Shall Overcome, a grandstanding (in the opinion of the main characters) civil rights activist writes an opera honoring generations of oppressed African-Americans. The title of his work is Roots, a decade before the release of a generational epic about oppressed Africans with the same title.
• Values Dissonance
  • While Death Shall Overcome (written in 1966), doesn't portray the racist coworker of an African-American stockbroker remotely sympathetically, modern readers might be incredulous about how much the guy's seemingly more enlightened bosses let him get away with before finally firing him.
  • In Murder Makes the Wheels Go Round (written in 1966), corporate whistleblowers are viewed with a disturbing amount of disdain and a cynical belief that they can't possibly be acting out of selflessness.
  • In Come to Dust (written in 1968), several characters are more horrified by the idea that a missing man may be a closet homosexual than by the idea that he's a hit-and-run killer. Granted, it may be more of the fact that he's suspected of picking up teenaged boys in bars (and that he's a college recruiter who regularly comes into contact with underage Ivy League applicants) that really upsets everyone.
• Values Resonance: Not all of the series has aged well in the decades since its release, but some parts may especially resonate with modern readers.
  • Death Shall Overcome shows how, even in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, institutional racism by non-government actors can still have a worrying impact on people's personal and professional lives (a concern still relevant today) by examining a black banker's efforts to get a Stock Exchange Seat.
  • Pick Up Sticks and Brewing Up a Storm both have sympathetic characters be dismissive of the idea that marijuana is a dangerous and addictive drug.
  • Some of the problems with absentee slumlords and their treatment of working class tenants that are discussed in Ashes to Ashes still cause concern.
  • In Something in the Air, the wife of a prominent CEO continues happily working as a news anchor without anyone even hinting at Stay in the Kitchen attitudes, with it even being suggested that her husband might give up his job or at least reduce his responsibilities (albeit not happily) at the end of the book after she gets a better job offer in another city.