A Guardian best crime and thriller book of 2024
‘Mason has been mainlining Simenon for a while, and it shows’ Mick Herron
‘The very definition of unputdownable’ David Peace
‘It’s like the provincial British version of Maigret’ Clare Chambers
Bournemouth 2008, the height of the financial crash. Don Bayliss, a timid and well-mannered accountant, vanishes after leaving his office before a scheduled meeting. His wife is both perplexed and distraught. His clothes are found discarded at the mouth of Poole Harbour.
After seven years of searching with no firm leads, the investigation is closed, and Don is presumed dead.
Until, sorting through his possessions, his wife finds a garish business card of one Dwight Fricker and decides it must be of some importance. Now more than eight years after his disappearance Dorset Police call in the Finder and the cold case is reopened.
The Finder begins with the last sightings of Don on the day he went missing, hearing how he seemed in a hurry, somewhat distracted? He unearths a string of overlooked clues that lead him to face the unlikely friendships that Don had made, the somewhat overbearing nature of Mrs Bayliss, the secrets that haunted him in his home life and the mistakes that led to him being investigated at work.
The Case of the Lonely Accountant is a dark and rich mystery that centres upon one lonely man and reveals the distance between those who are missing and those who are lost.
‘Mason has been mainlining Simenon for a while, and it shows’ Mick Herron
‘The very definition of unputdownable’ David Peace
‘It’s like the provincial British version of Maigret’ Clare Chambers
Bournemouth 2008, the height of the financial crash. Don Bayliss, a timid and well-mannered accountant, vanishes after leaving his office before a scheduled meeting. His wife is both perplexed and distraught. His clothes are found discarded at the mouth of Poole Harbour.
After seven years of searching with no firm leads, the investigation is closed, and Don is presumed dead.
Until, sorting through his possessions, his wife finds a garish business card of one Dwight Fricker and decides it must be of some importance. Now more than eight years after his disappearance Dorset Police call in the Finder and the cold case is reopened.
The Finder begins with the last sightings of Don on the day he went missing, hearing how he seemed in a hurry, somewhat distracted? He unearths a string of overlooked clues that lead him to face the unlikely friendships that Don had made, the somewhat overbearing nature of Mrs Bayliss, the secrets that haunted him in his home life and the mistakes that led to him being investigated at work.
The Case of the Lonely Accountant is a dark and rich mystery that centres upon one lonely man and reveals the distance between those who are missing and those who are lost.
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Reviews
I have loved, as I have written here several times, Simon Mason's DI Wilkins series. And now I love, for different reasons, his Finder Mysteries. The tone of the novellas Missing Person: Alice and The Case of the Lonely Accountant (you'll want to read them both) is deadpan, somewhere between Georges Simenon and Kazuo Ishiguro (When We Were Orphans). Deadpan does not mean dry. Nor do the parallels between each case and the book that the narrator is reading - What Maisie Knew, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - indicate literary self-indulgence. These are satisfying, carefully plotted stories, as well as haunting depictions of voids in people's lives' Nicholas Clee, Bookbrunch
Short, sharp mysteries . . . [Talib] and his investigations are fascinating.
Simon Mason is one of the brightest new names on the crime scene in years. Utterly compelling, Missing Person: Alice and The Case of the Lonely Accountant are brilliantly constructed mysteries, it is the cool tone in which they're written that's particularly striking, with the narrator carefully navigating his own tragedies while sifting through the traces of cracked lives with a careful humanity. Mason has been mainlining Simenon for a while, and it shows.
Extraordinary stories of ordinary lives riven by loss. I lived and breathed these two books for the time it took me to finish them. Absolutely exceptional.
Plotting and characterisation are as deft as we have come to expect from the talented Mason, with an elegant use of language.
[Simon] instinctively knows how to use and manipulate tropes pleasingly... there is much to enjoy
With tantalising hints at the sleuthing protagonist's equally murky back story these novellas break the walls of the police procedural down and descend into dark corners. I couldn't put them down.
Really works well and, at 198 pages of generously printed text, amply fulfils Ian Rankin's recent admonition against long works. Psychologically, a rich exploration that is full of merited excitement.
I loved Simon Mason's Finder mysteries, I read them at great speed as I couldn't put them down, and was left hoping the next would come soon. They are such a good mixture of social observation, literary echoes, and offbeat urban landscapes. Such a clever device to have our Finder reading a classic novel as he investigates - structurally brilliant!
Oxford-based Simon Mason has made a mark with his civilised crime fiction, but this duo of elegantly written outings is his finest work yet. It comprises two novellas: The Case of the Lonely Accountant and Missing Person: Alice, both featuring a nameless sleuth, 'The Finder'. Plotting and characterisation equally felicitous.
A short, ingeniously plotted missing-person mystery with a provincial English setting and an appealing atmoshphere of Maigret-ish melancholy.
Simon Mason's The Case of the Lonely Accountant . . . is a departure from his Oxford series . . . and one that underlines his range. In fewer than 200 pages (other authors please take note), The Case works very well indeed, spinning out from a clear start to bring in a possible reappearance of a suicide, the "Finder," and the ways in which you could disappear in Poole. Wonderfully written and consistently interesting.
