Death and Downsizing by Walt Lamberg

Mid October 1995 in Baltimore City, the work week starts off pleasantly enough, as though mocking the mood of fear and anxiety over crime and the economy. In spite of a national economic upturn, the city continues to hemorrhage jobs as corporations downsize or move to the suburbs. Tuesday morning, Howard Carlton Nobel, Jr., president and chief executive officer of Baltech, Inc., is found dead in his office, his head cut off by his own samurai sword, a memento of his trip to Tokyo.

The homicide detectives assigned to the case make an odd, but effective team: Joseph Isaacson is one part dedicated police officer, one part Jewish standup comedian (there is much humor in the novel), and one part scholar. Unmarried, a bit of a swinger, he loves the old neighborhoods and institutions of Baltimore City. His younger partner and friend, Daniel Burns, is a quiet family man, Roman Catholic, conservative, a black man who prefers suburbia.

The case starts off with the detectives confronted by too many possible suspects: over one hundred laid off workers, current employees with grievances, the housekeeping crew, the CEO’s wife, and a sword-wielding madman, who dumps a headless corpse at the Baltimore Zoo. Isaacson’s gut instinct tells him to focus on the CEO’s vice presidents.

The detectives find themselves wandering through a bureaucratic maze of corporate politics, greed, sex, lies, and one curious videotape. The reality of the CEO’s character remains elusive. Was he a modern, pragmatic businessman; or a dreamer, obsessed with bushido, the medieval code of the samurai warrior? How precisely did the CEO die? And exactly what was his alluring female vice president up to? The detectives (and the reader) do not find answers to these questions until the very end of the novel