‘The Case of the Lonely Accountant’ by Simon Mason

Published by Riverrun London,
11 September 2024.
ISBN 978 152942 599-4 (PB)

When Donald Bayliss (Don), Chief Accounting Officer and Vice President for Asset Management at Marshall Worth’s office in Bournemouth left the meeting he was chairing in 2008, those present assumed he would return in a few minutes. He didn’t. The next morning a bag containing the suit he’d been wearing was found near the sea. After the normal searches were made it was concluded that, for some unknown reason, Don had committed suicide.

Thirteen years later Don’s widow, Sylvia, now remarried, found a garish card amongst Don’s old business cards. The only information on it was the name, Dwight Fricker. She googled the name and found that in 2015 Fricker had been convicted of a string of misdemeanors including fraud and extortion. Concerned that Fricker might have been involved with Don’s disappearance, Sylvia rang the police. In their turn, anxious to avoid criticism from Sylvia who was active on their police board, the local police asked Talib, an ex-policeman who works as a ‘Finder’ of missing persons, to investigate what had happened to Don.

To begin with, nobody in Bournemouth had a bad word to say about Don. He seemed to be everybody’s idea of a quiet, decent, kind, and considerate individual who liked helping youngsters. Gradually though, a different side of Don’s character began to emerge. A prison visit to Dwight Fricker established that Don had been consorting with criminals and visiting night clubs. A lady at Marshall Worth described Don as a predator and a manager gave Talib sight of a report showing that Don was being investigated for embezzling company funds. Who to believe, and how to reconcile such discrepancies in Don’s character?

The Case of The Lonely Accountant is Simon Mason’s second novella featuring Talib, the ‘Finder’ of missing persons. That Talib should perform this service is especially poignant as we learn in this story and in Mason’s previous novella (Missing Person: Alice), that Talib is continuously haunted by the loss of his parents and of his wife and son.

In The Case of the Lonely Accountant, Talib shares lodgings with Mac, a youngish lady from New Zealand who, albeit from a completely different perspective, understands and sympathises with his position.  Mac shares Talib’s interest in literature and the two of them compare notes about Stevenson’s characters Jekyll and Hyde and the contrary features or the co-existence of good and bad seen within Don Bayliss’ character. Throughout the novella’s ingenious writing we are given many pointers as to why and how Don disappeared. But Talib has to make a second trip to New York, the home of Marshall Worth’s head office, before all is revealed. Only then can we appreciate all the clues and odd behaviours that have been so diligently planted along the way.

I have read both these novellas and feel that there is no reason why the second one cannot be read before the first. Indeed, reading the second one first might well increase the appreciation of the first.
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Reviewer Angela Crowther.

Simon Mason is an author of children's and adult books. His first adult novel, a black comedy entitled The Great English Nude, won the Betty Trask first novel award and Moon Pie was shortlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction prize. Running Girl was his first story starring Garvie Smith. Simon lives in Oxford with his wife and their two children. 

Angela Crowther is a retired scientist.  She has published many scientific papers but, as yet, no crime fiction.  In her spare time Angela belongs to a Handbell Ringing group, goes country dancing and enjoys listening to music, particularly the operas of Verdi and