Bryan Devore

Set in Colorado, “The Aspen Account” is the story of a young accountant with a secret assigned to take over as lead auditor for one of the largest software companies in the country after a mysterious death, only to find that the company has an even bigger secret than his own.

As a former accountant who now works in the software industry and loves mountains and mysteries, this storyline hit all the right buttons for me, so I had high hopes for this book.

First, the good. The overall plot was solid, as were the main characters. The story moves quickly so I was never bored. It was nice to see the technical accounting aspects in a mystery novel, and they were generally reasonably accurate, major exceptions noted below.

Now, the bad, and this list is unfortunately longer than the good. The makeup of the audit team and the discovery of the conspiracy stretch the bounds of believability early. Auditing a multi-billion dollar firm takes a massive amount of time and effort, and requires significant skill to perform; it isn't a task for three junior auditors and a few months. The real issue with the novel, however, is not technical, but the writing. It’s clearly the author’s first novel, and his writing isn't particularly polished yet. The dialog would be better suited to a soap opera, and the narrative alternates between awkward and kitschy, and the word choices were sometimes just odd. The pacing is something approaching frenetic, with new secondary characters and plot elements thrown in left and right without proper introduction or development, so you often finish a chapter feeling as if you might have been hit softly by a bus. Additionally, like this review, it goes on and on for far too long. The book could have been ended at three or four different points, but then you turn the page, and find that there’s still more to come. With new characters. And new plot elements. And then your head starts to suffer, just a little bit, from all of the overload.

So to wrap up this review, “The Aspen Account” had a lot of promise as a fun technical thriller and I really wanted to like it, but I can’t in good conscience recommend it as it just leaves too much to be desired.… (lisätietoja)

I was not disappointed by this book even though I did have my doubts at first. The characters are superiorly written, you really get to know each one personally. It's a twist of a plot that the author put together beautifully. I found it admirable the drive the brother has to find his missing brother, who disappeared while on an exchange student program in Eastern Europe.

This book is immersed in suspense and a sense of darkness, some great action scenes, and a bit of romance to tie it all together. The way the author brings out her brilliant way of achieving a great organized crime spree. I would recommend this book to all my friends who are interested in a plot with a large amount of crime and thrill. I give this book 5/5… (lisätietoja)

This is a fictitious story set in the world of financial accountancy and involves, amongst other things, death, skiing, a journalist and the financial audit of a software giant.

Although the book was set in, and involved details about financial accountancy, it was easy to read as it wasn’t too technical but when you read that the author has a background in accountancy then this made sense.

Don’t let the accountancy part put you off, it was needed for the story but didn’t play a bit part, it was more about corporate deception, who to trust, and how such decisions can be life changing.

I especially liked the early intrigue of who Glazier was and the way the story was revealed piece by piece.

Some of the ending of the book kept me guessing as some information was withheld from the reader but this added to the story and made sense in the end.

Overall, if you like a good mystery, I would recommend this as it was a good read from a debut novelist that kept my interest until the end.

*I received a complimentary copy of this book in order to review it.
… (lisätietoja)