The Case of the Lonely Accountant

This is another of Simon Mason’s ‘Finder Mysteries’, featuring a specialist who is hired to augment police resources in cases of missing persons. Typically, these are cold cases. Here, the subject is Don Bayliss, an accountant living in Bournemouth who went missing 15 years ago, leaving his clothing at the water’s edge, and was assumed to have committed suicide despite the fact that no body has ever been found.
 
The re-opening of the case is largely down to Don’s wife Sylvia, who had found amongst her husband’s papers a business card for a violent criminal, Fricker, currently serving time for murder in a Category A prison. It is primarily to alleviate her worry that the connection might be related to Don’s disappearance that the police have brought in the Finder.
 
As in previous books in the series, the Finder contacts all the known witnesses in the case. His patient but penetrating questions soon reveal the inadequacy of the initial police investigation, while also suggesting that the commonly held picture of Don as a phlegmatic and considerate man was far from the whole truth. Several strands of new evidence pull in different directions and confuse the Finder for a time.
 
During his stay in Bournemouth, the Finder is reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. He also forms a friendship with a New Zealand woman staying at his hotel. Both the book and the affair generate thoughts about relationships and memories, in which more about the Finder’s past history is revealed, and which ultimately facilitate full disclosure of what happened to Don.
 
What is so impressive about the Finder series is the way the protagonist approaches his task: absolutely without preconception but fully alert to key details which seem out of line with the general understanding of events. Despite police doubts as to the reliability of some of the witnesses and the time passed since the disappearance, he is able to gently extract useful information.  
The Finder combines his literary enthusiasms with his sifting of the facts and analysis of the case. This, combined with his sensitivity to the nuances of feeling from witnesses, makes for an irresistible central character.