The Bezzle

The year is 2006, and Martin Hench is a self-employed forensic accountant at the peak of his career. He is a veteran of the long guerrilla war between people who hide money and people who hunt for it. He spends his downtime on Catalina Island, where imported bison roam the bluffs and a frozen, reheated fast-food burger costs twenty-five dollars.

During one vacation there, Marty disrupts what looks like a harmless scheme. He has no idea he has set off a chain of events that will shape the next ten years of his life. In doing so he has strayed into the playground of the ultra-wealthy and spoiled their fun. For these people money is a tool, a game and a way of keeping score.

Their newest target is California's Department of Corrections. Hidden behind layers of shell companies and investors, they are confident no one can ever identify them. They care nothing for the lives they wreck. All they want is to drain as much money as possible from the government and from the hundreds of thousands of prisoners in the system, whose lives are traded like stock shares.

The Bezzle is a thriller that attacks the privatized prison system and digs into the convoluted financial trickery behind the 2008 financial crash. It follows Red Team Blues in the Martin Hench series.