ACCOUNTING FOR CRIME

Richard King • Literary Fiction / Crime Fiction / Noir / Roman à Clef

Book Description

Robert Scroyle is a senior partner at Scroyle, Caitiff, Rudisbe and Spavin — a Montreal accounting firm where the ledgers are balanced but the morals are not. When a cosmetics founder shows up with an \"accounting problem\" and an underworld figure needs large sums of cash to disappear, Scroyle's carefully ordered world begins to unravel. What starts as a creative tax scheme spirals into a vortex of kidnapping, undercover police operations, love triangles, and cold-blooded calculation — all set against the backdrop of a city where the line between legitimate business and organized crime has always been porous.

Richard King — a legendary figure in Montreal's English-language literary scene, co-founder of the iconic Paragraphe Bookstore, and a beloved CBC broadcaster — wrote ACCOUNTING FOR CRIME as a roman à clef drawn from decades of watching the city's deal-makers and power-brokers at work. The result is a financial thriller with genuine literary pedigree: a novel that understands that the most dangerous crimes aren't committed with guns, but with spreadsheets.

ACCOUNTING FOR CRIME is Canadian noir at its most sophisticated — a world of tailored suits and dirty money, where every handshake conceals a trap and the only thing more dangerous than the mob is the accountant who knows too much.

Author Bio

RICHARD KING (1943–2022) was a Montreal author, broadcaster, and bookseller whose influence on Canadian literary culture spanned decades. As co-founder of Paragraphe Bookstore, he helped shape Montreal's English-language literary community. As a longtime CBC Radio broadcaster and columnist, he brought literature to audiences across the country. ACCOUNTING FOR CRIME draws on his intimate knowledge of Montreal's business and cultural elite — a roman à clef written by a man who knew where all the bodies were buried.

Book Details

Also by This Author

King also authored several works of non-fiction.

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