The Audit

She never raised her voice. She never took a shortcut. She only asked questions.

Claire Dunmore is a forensic accountant so careful that clients forget her at parties. When the chair of a beloved Zurich children's foundation hires her for a routine "grant readiness review," it looks like the easiest job of her career.

Then she finds sixty-two payments to a consultancy that has no clients. Each one sits just under the limit that would have shown it to the board. Together they add up to more than six hundred thousand francs, and all of them trace back to Martin Keller, the warm, generous Executive Director whom every donor adores, and who once owed Claire his career.

The rules are cruel. Keller's contract can only be ended "for cause" after a court judgment or his own written confession. Any accusation brings a lawyer, a scandal, and the end of the charity that feeds two thousand children a day. So Claire does something no one expects. She doesn't expose him. She offers to help him fix it.

One signature at a time.

As the pages pile up, the bookkeeper who senses something is wrong prepares to go to the authorities. The treasurer sweats through every meeting and seems to be hiding something. And Claire keeps one rule above all: every explanation must be in Keller's own words.

A quiet, razor-sharp novella of trust, paperwork and consequences, set among the trams, banks and fog of Zurich. For readers who like their thrillers precise, their heroines unflappable, and their endings earned.