Some of the mysteries:

Did they protect the welfare of the public?

Did they wisely manage the public’s money?

Did they maintain and protect the public’s property?

Auditors are drawn to mysteries. We want to know why things don’t work as intended. Sometimes it’s a ‘whodunit,’ but more often it’s a ‘who didn’t do it.’ We find the reasons that things go wrong and recommend fixes.

The skills we exercise – gathering evidence, analyzing situations, solving problems – fit easily into the classic mystery stories many of us love to read. But there has never been an auditor detective, probably because most book buyers wrongly believe auditors are boring. We aren’t.

The first book below describes strategies to improve our auditing, the second and third fiction books combine our auditing work with alarming investigations. The main character, Jim Gance, is an elected auditor in Portland who goes beyond the bounds of performance auditing. The setting is a real Portland but all the situations and characters are fiction.

The second edition of the guidebook is available now for purchase in paperback or eBook format. The first book in the Jim Gance mystery series is available now in both formats. The second mystery will be arriving in January 2027.