The Forensic Certified Public Accountant and the Cremated 64-Squares Financial Statements

The Forensic Certified Public Accountant #1

by Dwight David Thrash CPA FCPA CGMA

The magical world of Forensic Accounting comes to life as Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant along with the other 3 members of his Forensic Certified Public Accountant Drew Samson, Dena Hope, and Veronica Jackson try to catch the "cat burglar terrorist" of the 64-SQUARES skyscraper building and help 64-SQUARES reconstruct the financial statements.

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Book Club

107 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 25, 2016

Reviews

[Marc *Dark Reader with a Thousand Young! Iä!* · Rating 1 out of 5]

I rarely swear in real life. It feels uncomfortable, and I virtually never get un-self-conscious enough to let a curse slip. I occasionally put a swear word into one of my book reviews, because sometimes it's simply le mot juste.

I am going to swear a lot in this review. Likely with some light blasphemy mixed in.

You have possibly heard of this book before. If the title doesn't ring a bell, maybe you've heard tell of its protagonist, Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant. If you are still drawing a blank, you are a luckier soul than I.

I just read the entire book, so I can authoritatively say, "Fuck this book."

But before we get to more of that, the salient question is, who would write this thing? . There's not a lot to say about Dwight David Thrash, other than that he is a Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant; he loves his family; he supports the First Baptist Church Lufkin in Lufkin, TX; he follows the Dallas Cowboys, or at least their cheerleaders; and he wrote eight of these fucking books.

It's all fine. I hold absolutely nothing against the author. I have no reason not to think that he is a good person who desires only good things for the world. He fully deserves any income received from the sale of his books. No one is being tricked or coerced into reading them. Anyone cracking the covers is fully aware of what they are engaging with. The author is not inappropriately promoting them in any way. I don't think he's "taking the piss" (in the Commonwealth sense) or scamming at all. Based solely on this book's content, my personal theory is that he is some stripe of neuro-atypical individual, perhaps an accounting savant, which is not a problem in any way (and please, dear reader, if this terminology is offensive, outdated, or inaccurate at all, enlighten me). It's the only explanation that makes sense to me.

With that out of the way, the book still made my head explode. And not in the good way.

If there's anyone to blame, it's Jeff Bezos of course, and Kindle Direct Publishing, for removing absolutely any and all barriers to self-publishing. This book proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that anything, ANYTHING can be published with zero expense, zero gatekeepers, zero anything, and may Yog-Sothoth have mercy on our souls forevermore.

So. This Fucking Book.

Someone blew up the 64-SQUARES building. It was a 64 story skyscraper, situated smack dab in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Did you know that 64-SQUARES was the tallest skyscraper in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada? I bet you didn't, but now you know that 64-SQUARES was the tallest skyscraper in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Pretty awful, huh? Imagine the devastating loss of life. Wait, no one was killed or injured? How can that be? Well,

{The} 64-SQUARES skyscraper building had used high-technology drone robots for security and to answer all the cellphone calls. The drones were also used to clean and perform janitorial work. Only drones are allowed in the 64-SQUARES skyscraper building from 11 PM to 5 AM every night. It is awesome that even though this was terrible terrorist attack no one was in the 64-SQUARES skyscraper building when the “cat burglar terrorist” attacked the building, therefore, no one was injured or killed.

Oh, okay then. Well, figuring out who did it and why, through the power of forensic accounting will be fun, maybe, right? Please?

Take the following phrase:

The accounting firm TTAB which stands for Total Tax Auditing Bookkeeping

Read it out loud, in full, fourteen times. Go ahead, I'll wait. All done? Good. You have now read those words as many times as I have. This phrase occurs fourteen times in the span of three pages in this book. Is it an interesting phrase? No, it is not.

Now imagine twenty-four equally dull phrases, each of them at least four times as long, and each repeated sixty-eight times over the span of one hundred pages. Or even better: go get the dullest textbook or non-fiction reference manual you own. Open it randomly and read three full pages. Now read the same three pages eighteen times in a row. Oh, but before you do that, cross out some of the conjunctions and replace some of the words with other words, so that you have multiple grammatical errors to read over and over and over again.

Did you do it? If so, you still did not come anywhere fucking close to the experience of reading this book. Jesus Christ. Grammatical errors, too many to count, and some of the same ones repeated over and over again, are the barest part of it. Another part is the repetition. Lists of people and their credentials both as acronyms and then spelled out in full, repeated over and over and over again, exactly the same every time, coming back again just when you thought you were done with a particular one. Lists of items and procedures used over and over and over. Chapters four through twenty-one are the exact same chapter. Each presents a role or person in a specific role. That role is described in the dullest imagineable way. The most self-explanatory career path to that role is listed. The family structure of the person in that role is described. The fact that all four members of Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant's four member team, including Titus Uno, yes, we know, Titus Uno, your four member team includes you, it's you and three other people, we know, stop fucking clarifying this for us already every goddamn time, will each apply their single known skillset to examining that role is stated, identically in every instance. They don't apply their skills; it is merely stated that they will, in exactly the same way, in each . . . single . . . instance. Let me expand on this:

There are so many people in this puzzle, such as the insurance investigator, the police, the several government agencies from many countries, the employees of 64-SQUARES: the CEO or the Chief Executive Officer, the CFO or the Chief Financial Officer, the COO or the Chief Operations Officer, the CAO or the Chief Accounting Officer, the Internal Auditor, the Accountants, the Board of Directors, and the other white-collar workers: external auditors, the Xerox repairer, the postman, the package delivers, the janitors, the security guards, or the relatives of the employees.

Each. Of. These. People. Gets. Their. Own. Chapter. Which. Are. All. Exactly. The same. Except. For. Meaningless. Minor. Details. Jesus fuck.

It's like a book written by Mojo Jojo but after his brain has leaked out of his cranial dome. Then edited by the Ameoba Boys and published by Him.

It could have been ten percent more bearable, if only anything fucking happened for the first hundred pages (out of one hundred and six), but the worst part of all is that NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENS. Here, I am going to give you a list of the first twenty-one chapters (out of twenty-three):

Chapter 1: Introduction of Titus Uno CPA FCPA CGMA
Chapter 2: Drew Samson, Dena Hope, and Veronica Jackson and myself - My Four Forensic Certified Public Accountant Team Members
Chapter 3: Forensic Certified Public Accountant Team Spy Gadgets
Chapter 4: 64-SQUARES and Chess
Chapter 5: Quick Swift - Insurance Investigator
Chapter 6: the Vancouver Police & the Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services
Chapter 7: Officer Chuck Mac of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Agent “Davy” Bond of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Agent “Super” Vision of the Central Intelligence Agency, Agent “Spider” Webb of the Homeland Security
Chapter 8: Jack Starr – the CEO or the Chief Executive Officer of 64-SQUARES
Chapter 9: Sarah Diamond – the CFO or the Chief Financial Officer of 64-SQUARES
Chapter 10: Peter Graham - the COO or the Chief Operations Officer of 64-SQUARES
Chapter 11: Pam Valentine - the CAO or the Chief Accounting Officer of 64-SQUARES
Chapter 12: Greg Templar - the Internal Auditor of 64-SQUARES
Chapter 13: Bob Sinclair, Sue Christmas, Tina Bell, and Jill Franks -the Accountants of 64-SQUARES
Chapter 14: Zach Peterson, Sam Witherspoon, Sandy Smith, Larry Jones, Vanessa Price, Mickey Keys, and Barbara Coats – Members of the Board of Directors of 64-SQUARES
Chapter 15: William Jackson and Rosy O’Neal - The External Auditors
Chapter 16: the Other Important Employees of 64-SQUARES
Chapter 17: the Reason for the Explosion of 64-SQUARES
Chapter 18: the Nature, Extent, and Timing of the Explosion of 64-SQUARES
Chapter 19: the Relevance of the Explosion of 64-SQUARES
Chapter 20: the Weakness that Caused the Explosion of 64-SQUARES
Chapter 21: the Facts about the Explosion of 64-SQUARES

Congratulations, you have read most of the table of contents, AND YOU NOW KNOW LITERALLY EXACTLY AS MUCH ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED AS I DID HAVING ACTUALLY READ THE FULL FUCKING CHAPTERS. Crom almighty. The reader learns absolutely shit about the investigation that Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant's four member team, in any other fucking book, would be doing over the span of this many pages. All the entire book is, is listing every single interested party in this massive, internationally significant, multi-billion-trillion dollar crime, in THE MOST FUCKING MIND-NUMBINGLY BORING DETAIL POSSIBLE.

Who blew up the fucking building?

Was it Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant?

Was it Drew Samson, expert detective on Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant's four person Certified Public Accountant Team which includes Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant?

Was it Dena Hope, expert fucking computer programmer and hacker on Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant's four person Certified Public Accountant Team which includes Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant?

Was it Veronica Jackson, expert organizer on Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant's four person Certified Public Accountant Team which includes Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, who doesn't do a fucking thing except schedule appointments?

Was it Quick Swift, Insurance Investigator?

Was it Officer Chuck Mac of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police?

Was it Agent “Davy” Bond of the Federal Bureau of Investigation?

Was it Agent “Super” Vision of the Central Intelligence Agency?

Was it Agent “Spider” Webb of Homeland Security?

(And why are the FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security so heavily involved in a building bombing in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada? I mean, it makes sense for a "cat burglar terrorist" act of this magnitude to draw international law enforcement agency involvement, but the book never bothers to discuss this, of all fucking things).

Was it Jack Starr, the CEO or the Chief Executive Officer of 64-SQUARES?

Was it Sarah Diamond, the CFO or the Chief Financial Officer of 64-SQUARES?

Was it Peter Graham, the COO or the Chief Operations Officer of 64-SQUARES?

Was it Pam Valentin, the CAO or the Chief Accounting Officer of 64-SQUARES?

Was it Greg Templar, the internal auditor of 64-SQUARES?

Was it Bob Sinclair, Sue Christmas, Tina Bell, or Jill Franks, the accountants of 64-SQUARES?

Was it Zach Peterson, Sam Witherspoon, Sandy Smith, Larry Jones, Vanessa Price, Mickey Keys, or Barbara Coats, the members of the Board of Directors of 64-SQUARES?

Was it William Jackson or Rosy O’Neal, the external auditors?

Was it any of the other important employees of 64-SQUARES, namely the Xerox repairer, the postman, the package delivers, the janitors, the security guards, or the relatives of the employees?

No, none of those fucking people? THEN WHY THE FUCK DID THE NARRATOR SPEND SO MUCH FUCKING TIME TALKING ABOUT EVERY ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE WITHOUT SAYING ANYTHING REMOTELY INTERESTING ABOUT ANY OF THEM OR ACTUALLY INVESTIGATING SHIT???

It was Clef Treble who did it, and I don't even fucking care about a spoiler tag because fuck this book. It's not a fucking spoiler when the asshole’s existence wasn't mentioned or even hinted at until the book says he's the one who blew the fucking building up on page 98 of 106.

He did it in the stupidest fucking way possible too. He fucking parachuted onto the roof of the building from an airplane, placed four 64-story explosive ropes down the sides of the building, went into the building and opened all of the safes with the most precious information stored in them, didn't steal the information but left the safes hanging open to ensure that all the contents would be destroyed when the building blew up, and then parachuted again off the building, floated safely to the ground, got in a car and drove away . . .

I'm not going to bother explaining why he did it, because who gives a shit.

And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for the meddling Titus Uno, Certified Public Ac ah fuck it, I'm done. Now I can go and watch Krimson Rogue's review of this book and see his head fucking explode.

[Ben De Bono · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Iliad of terrible books. Every page is so consistently awful it's hard to imagine anything ever outdoing it. For me it went full circle from terrible to entertaining and was truly a page turner in the sense of having to see if the next chapter could possibly be any worse. Thrash never disappoints as each chapter is, indeed, progressively more awful than the one before. Truly a milestone of literature

[Captnamerca · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read along with the 372 Pages podcast.

At first it was kind of cute, in a childish way. Then it got repetitive. Then it got annoying with the obvious cut-and-paste method of filling chapters.

The final chapter was a massive WTF? I laughed out loud at the absurdity of it all. It sure sounds like the author has been asked to leave a building by the police once in his life.

Even when read as part of a "bad book" club, this is not a good book.

[Marsh "Bad Sci Fi" Bloom · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, this is a hard book to review, but I'm going to take it at face value and classify it as Experimental Fiction. Now that I've done that I wanted to give it 4 stars. It's really close. Say 3.5 stars.

There are layers here that mess with the mind. The macro-produced repeated phrases that send you into a meditative state as you read, the contractual language that lulls into mundanity while also forcing your eyes into a hunt for novel phrases, like an an easter egg roll staged by one of those asshles who color their eggs a swirling puke brown and grey.

That's level one of this work.

Level two, beneath the veneer of overwrought precision "Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada" (every damn time) is a manuscript that was not checked over and edited by the author even once before being published (let alone by anyone editor-like). Missing words, misused words, typos abound. Like, I said, taken at face value like I am here, this makes quite an artistic statement. Perhaps it speaks to human limits in a world gone mad or frailty of the human condition? We slip off this mortal coil, but not before failing to correctly format life's impact statement.

Level three is a niagara-like torrent of extraneous information. Characters are introduced, many with hilariously ridiculous names, and we learn where they met their wife and their kids' names and then... nothing. They slip away like so many figures zondering off into the night, only to be listed later because they were caught up in the relentless copy and paste of the author's possibly semi-sentient desktop computer. 3/4 of the narrative are filled with this.

Level four is a conundrum. Our Main Character is a dogged and childlike-innocent hunter of criminals who blithely goes along throughout the narrative repeatedly telling us all the ways he is 1, ignorant of the law and legal procedure, and 2, is using all the tools and people he works with to break the law. All with zero sense or hint of irony that might give the reader a resting place in the slow swirl of what's happening? and what's it all for anyway?

This book has almost no plot until suddenly, the plot is over just as it has begun and we never learn how our Main Character had any kind of hand in the conclusion of the events despite the tedious previous lengthy descriptions of all the things the character’s team was doing, which is its own kind of empty Munch Scream against an unfair universe driven by torrents of text and data.

So yeah. 3.5 stars. On the upside, I picked up Joyce's Ulysses again and it's going a lot better now.

[Alex Montag · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well then… if I, Alex Montag, Certified Cisco Network Associate, Microsoft 365 Certified Security Administrator Associate and Computer Hacking Forensic Investigator, were to hazard a guess, it would be that Dwight David Thrash, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, has a sturdy set of CTRL, C & V keys. The sheer amount of copy/paste in this story is intimidating. At first I, Alex Montag, Certified Cisco Network Associate, Microsoft 365 Certified Security Administrator Associate and Computer Hacking Forensic Investigator, attempted to approach the story as a piece of Dadaist writing but I, Alex Montag, Certified Cisco Network Associate, Microsoft 365 Certified Security Administrator Associate and Computer Hacking Forensic Investigator, suspect that I , Alex Montag, Certified Cisco Network Associate, Microsoft 365 Certified Security Administrator Associate and Computer Hacking Forensic Investigator, might be giving Dwight David Thrash, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, a bit too much credit.

There were a few examples of technique that made me smile and I, Alex Montag, Certified Cisco Network Associate, Microsoft 365 Certified Security Administrator Associate and Computer Hacking Forensic Investigator, would like to think that the author was attempting some sort of post-modern experimental cut-up method in his approach, but unfortunately during the conveying of the adventures of Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, Dwight David Thrash, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant broke one of the primary rules of narrative, that rule being “show, don’t tell”. There was A LOT of telling, and very little if any showing. For example, during the copy/paste chapters we are told that the other investigative team members “use his private investigator skills” or “use her computer and hacking skills” or “set up meeting to interview” certain key people to uncover information, but we never read any investigating or hacking or interview scenes.

I, Alex Montag, Certified Cisco Network Associate, Microsoft 365 Certified Security Administrator Associate and Computer Hacking Forensic Investigator, would like to point the finger at the 372 Pages We’ll Never Get Back podcast. The hosts, Conor Lastowka and Michael J Nelson, used their podcasting and humour skills to lure me into reading this book. But even at a mere 105 pages I, Alex Montag, Certified Cisco Network Associate, Microsoft 365 Certified Security Administrator Associate and Computer Hacking Forensic Investigator, wish that I, Alex Montag, Certified Cisco Network Associate, Microsoft 365 Certified Security Administrator Associate and Computer Hacking Forensic Investigator, hadn’t.

[Beth · Rating 1 out of 5]

There are some "what not to do" lessons for potential authors to be learned from this novelette, currently priced in ebook at a rather steep almost-$10.

First, that capital letters have a natural slowing effect on reading, and paragraphs that take up full pages and are full of sentences like this . . .

If there is a really important or a key piece of information, I, Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, will call a special meeting meaning that Drew Samson, Dena Hope, Veronica Jackson, and I, Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, will have a group conference call to go ahead and communicate with each other and discussing what we feel that we should do based on this new information.

. . . will cause a reader to balk, and then start skimming desperately to find anything that might contribute to an actual narrative. I've never been a skimmer, but this one forced me to level my skills up.

Second, that padding out a thin and underdeveloped story with identically constructed chapters, each chapter having multiple copy-and-pasted passages, will be very obvious to a reader. Especially if the same exact errors crop up again and again, in exactly the same portions of over a dozen chapters.

Dena Hope used her programming skills and hacking skills to gain information that people that pertain to 64-SQUARES.

Third, that a mystery is not a mystery if you introduce a massive cast of characters over at least 80% of the book, and your culprit is somebody entirely different!

If you don't bother presenting any of the logic or investigation that led to the culprit's arrest, where does the pleasure of reading a mystery come from? How does forensic accounting factor into this investigation in the first place? Is a FCPA being there to tell the court that a building's value has gone down to $0 as a result of its being blown up really necessary in a trial for terrorism? Why did Titus Uno's group need to spend (and, presumably, bill) what must be many, many thousands of dollars to surveil dozens of people to come to that rather obvious conclusion? Why do I feel like I've lost cognitive function over the course of reading this barely 100-page-long "book"?

Thanks to the 372 Pages podcast, I've become much more tolerant of naïve art recently, but this one managed to try my patience. That kind of writing, and blatant lazy shortcuts, don't sit happily together. Constant and universal surveillance on 64-SQUARES employees and persons of interest (including one who I'd call the victim of a crime but the author doesn't), and the nicest of nicey niceness, were odd bedfellows as well.

Companies monitor what their employees do, even when they leave there [sic] desk to use the restroom.
***
This all could have been avoided if everyone would have been nice to each other.

I did rather like the the idea of a 64-story building with a chess museum on its ground floors, but since it was blown up--I mean "cremated"--before the story even started, there wasn't much to appreciate there. The rest of it was a bunch of the same thing over and over and over again, and an abrupt and unconvincing endgame. Quite possibly the worst book I've read since I signed up on this website. Though I've been told there are worse ones in the 372 Pages library. Lookin' forward to it. :|

[Melissa Koser · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the dumbest book I've ever read, and the author needs to be slapped for publishing it. I read this along with the podcast 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back, so I expected it to be pretty awful, but it far exceeded my expectations: bad writing with grammatical and spelling errors, stupid character names with even stupider biographies, tons of information that is useless to the plot, and about two-thirds of the book which exists simply because computers have a Copy/Paste function. The plot, what little there is, is garbage (and poorly wrapped up at that). Even getting to listen to people mock this didn't make up for what a waste of time it was.

[April Tolliver · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not finish after something like 3 pages. I could not handle this phrase " I, Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant" used constantly, and multiple times. I skipped ahead some pages, and still saw this used every time he said "I" and I decided that I (certified reader of anything and everything, but without the actual certifications) was done. To be fair, it may have been an amazing story if one could get past that. I could not.

[Laura · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dwight David Thrash, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, wrote this book to share his love of being a Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant. The POV character is Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, and many other people in the book also have backgrounds in math or accounting and love the heck out of their jobs. They seriously do the coolest things ever - the book tells us so.

Telling is about all the book does. A 64 story skyscraper has been blown up in an act of terror and Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, is hired by the company to get their finances in order AND investigate who did it. Evidence is gathered, suspects are interviewed and dismissed, and breakthroughs are made, but we are only told about how the case unfolds in the broadest possible terms. There is no action or details.

And even the broad strokes are muddled because the book pastes the same information over and over again (complete with the same typos), but this information has nothing to do with why the building was blown up.

This book started out as an honest delight to read thanks to Thrash's obvious love of being a Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, but the book needs more than that energy to carry it. More research needs to be done on how a company like 64 SQUARES would operate - the board's 'friend' would not be made CEO, for example - and the information needs to be presented in a more compelling and entertaining way than a series of two paged biographies. Show the characters in real time interacting with each other.

As Stephen King gave as writing advise, if you want to be a writer, read everything. I had the feeling that Thrash doesn't read very much fiction as I was reading his book. Read, read, read, and observe how others authors convey plot and character information in their prose and in how the characters react and interact.

[Ross · Rating 1 out of 5]

I, the reader of this book, read this book by reading. I like reading, I like reading good books. It is nice when people are good to each other.

The level of writing in this book was child-like to put it mildly. Reading it was a real experience, first it was kind of funny. then annoying, then it was funny again, then about midway through the tedium of repetition got to me and I went on a journey from mildy annoyed to raging at this book until the last two chapters where it became funny again. If you need a laugh give this book a scan.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most bizarre book that I have ever read. Thank you, 372pages.com

[Damian Penny]

Who is the Sheriff of Goodreads?!?

[Slurpin'UpBooty · Rating 2 out of 5]

Alright, I had to read this story for class and write a summary of it for a paper. We were on a somewhat strict time limit so this isn't my best work, but I'm just gonna copy/paste that paper here. Trust me though, there is so much more about this story that I could not touch here due to time contraints.

The Worst Novella Ever Written
The book: The Forensic Certified Public Accountant and the Cremated 64-SQUARES Financial Statements by Dwight David Thrash is the worst Novella ever written by human hands. This book is unique in its brand of trash, however. Normally with a story the general public claims to be “not good” there are some common tropes. A Mary Sue protagonist, an overuse of Deus Ex Machinas, a lack of proper stakes, typos even. This book is an enigma, however. It does not have memorable characters or stakes, but this book has something integral to a story missing. This book does not have a theme or a plot. This is, without a single rival or competitor, the worst story ever written.

The entire plot of this book is that the 64 story Skyscraper, 64-SQUARES, located in Vancouver, is destroyed by a “terrorist”. Our protagonist, Titus Uno, an accountant, is called in to assess the damages. There is nothing inherently wrong with that idea for a plot. It is the base of an average detective story, it could work. However, that is not the idea for the plot. That is the plot. In its entirety. There are no greater details than just saying Titus Uno is investigating the damages to the building.

Along with this, there is no time period given for this story. This could take place in the year 2000 or the year 22000. The technology used in the book feels as if it could exist in the early 2000s, but is also just advanced enough to question what year it is. Things such as telescoping contact lenses that can: “zoom in on a dime 100 yards away and you can read the writing on the face of the dime (Thrash 23).” Titus Uno isn’t some NSA spy who could feasibly have access to this futuristic, yet believable technology. He is an accountant. How did he get telescopic contact lenses?

Titus Uno is the protagonist of this story. He is the most fleshed-out character in this novella, but it feels like comparing printer paper to office ruled paper. He is the narrator, and he often breaks the first person POV to randomly switch to second person and speak to the reader, “Good, you will not tell anyone else about what I am about to divulge to you (Thrash 23).”
However, breaking the fourth wall for no reason is not the leading character trait of Titus Uno. Throughout the story, Titus feels the need to constantly repeat his titles. Whenever the word “I” shows up, it will often be followed up with “, Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant,” The sheer magnitude of this would make an illiterate man vomit. It happens on almost every page, sometimes multiple times on one page. Sometimes multiple times on one sentence:
“I, Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, have been so successful, that I am honored to be able to hire 3 people to work with me as members of my four Forensic Certified Public Accountant team, including myself I, Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, decided that I, Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, needed a global designation to be recognized and respected worldwide, so I, Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, earned the Chartered Global Management Accountant designation (7).”
This is one sentence. This is not paraphrased, this is not exaggerated, this is verbatim. Titus Uno repeats his titles 106 times in the story. Unintentionally, Dwight David Thrash gave his character who was supposed to be a smart accountant the trait of being a rambling maniac.

Bad characters are not this book’s biggest fault, however. From chapters two to twenty-one of this story, nothing happens. The plot screeches to a dead stop immediately after chapter one, and the book spends nineteen of its twenty-three chapters describing the various employees of the 64-SQUARES skyscraper. These chapters do not progress the plot, as they are only descriptions of these characters. None of the characters presented in these chapters appear later in the story. They only appear in the chapters dedicated to them. It does not matter if the character is interesting or not (All of these characters are squarely in the “not” category). If a chapter is dedicated 100% to a character who does literally nothing in the plot or does not contribute to the theme of the story, then the chapter is objectively worthless. Chapters two to twenty-one of this twenty-three chapter long book are objectively worthless to the story as a whole.

While 82% of this book’s chapters may be worthless to the plot, there has to be something good in that last 18%, right? ...No. There is not. The last two chapters are spent on the court case to convict the terrorist behind the 64-SQUARES office building explosion, who was abruptly revealed to be a man named Clef Treble. Clef does not appear in any prior chapter, further solidifying the fact that every chapter before this, besides Chapter one, was arbitrary at best.

Clef’s motive for “Blowing the 64-SQUARES building to rubbish” is not terrorism either, he lacks any political goal. It is obscene stupidity. Clef’s reason for his crime was because he loved the woman Pam Valentine, who worked at 64-SQUARES. A man named Peter Graham also loved Pam, and Peter was Clef’s superior, so he just fired Clef. Now even though Clef has the easiest wrongful termination lawsuit in the world, he instead decides to create two-hundred and fifty-six bombs and destroy the 64-SQUARES office building by flying in on helicopter and rappelling ropes of bombs down each side of the building, risking the lives and welfare of thousands of people, including Pam Valentine.

Clef Treble is a psychopath who would carpet bomb all of New York city just because one house had bed bugs in the eighties. Peter Graham is a hero for saving Pam from this obsessed and inane monster.

This is the worst novelette ever written. Everything about it, from the prose that is written like a police report, to the characters who are somehow outmatched by office-ruled paper in terms of personality, there is nothing to be gained from this abomination of storytelling. Even to use it as an example of what not to do when writing a novel is near impossible as the prose of this book is so incredibly stiff and uninteresting that even the worst pre-teen fanfiction writer would have to intentionally try to write with prose this bad. This is, without any competition or rival, the absolute worst novela ever written.

[Hurlock · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is very little that can be said about this book that hasn’t already been said. If there is any insight I can add to the quality of this book, it is simply that this one is the best of all in the Forensic Certified Public Accountant series.

There are a lot of things to consider before judging any form of media. For instance, you would not judge a kids book the same way you would judge something like Game of Thrones. While this was written by a fully functioning adult who knew better, it is clear from page 1 that this man had no previous experience when it comes to being a writer. With that in mind, I believe it best to judge this innocent attempt at being a writer purely on his own books.

So, as stated before, this book is the best out of all of them. Don’t worry, I won’t repeat myself as many times as the author felt there was a need to. To clarify, when the main character: Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant refers to himself, he gives us his name and titles almost every single time. To the point where it is repeated over a hundred times. And that’s not accounting for the occasions he decides to copy and paste large sections of chapters when introducing characters. Sections that repeat the nature of how a meeting goes. It’s things like that that might hook someone to check out this book. But that overlooks the fun to be had with the Forensic Accountant series.

The most charming and delightful being the generous nature of the writing. Generous in that everyone is just a wonderful person in this book. Just about every character is employed, happily married, and has kids. Which is awesome, it is great that all these people have a job and a family. With some getting married after talking to each other for two hours. You know like all normal engagements.

Another prevalent aspect of the writing style is clarifying things that have no need to be clarified. Such as explaining that a camera takes pictures or that players in a chess tournament are playing a nonviolent version of chess. I guess he thought the wizard chess in Harry Potter was just a common version of chess.

I especially loved how he described the concealing ability of an ear hearing piece.

If someone does see the ear hearing piece, they will just think that it is an ordinary hearing aid. “What did you say?”

There’s even an occasion where he decides to have a conversation with the reader.

I Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, am privileged to tell you about a secret new gadget, so I hope that you will promise that you will not tell anybody else about this top-secret gadget. Good, you will not tell anybody else about what I am going to divulge to you.

As for the story. A villain who gets the title the “cat burglar terrorist” so that everyone that is involved in the case will know that this case is the one that is being disgusted, had broken into the 64-SQUARES skyscraper building and blew it to rubbish. 64-SQUARES is, you guessed it, a 64-floor skyscraper building. If you’re wondering about the casualties of this heinous crime, don’t worry, no one was hurt because only drones are allowed in 64-SQUARES after working hours.

The real concern is the financial statements of 64-SQUARES that need to be resurrected like a phoenix because the “cat burglar terrorist” had the nerve to take all the backup software disks that had the financial statements information stored on them.

As for how the building was destroyed, the “cat burglar terrorist” parachuted onto the roof of the 64-SQUARES skyscraper building and took four explosive ropes that had explosives rigged to blow on all 64 floors and all four sides of the building. I cannot think of a more impossible task than this.
If you think you're going to get any further details about this impossible skill no one could achieve during the trial, you will not. Instead, we get the testimony of Titus Uno explaining the cash flows of 64-SQUARES and how the value is currently zero because the building is destroyed, and that the destruction of the building was a non-cash event. It’s actually mesmerizing in how bad it is.

That’s without even bringing up the fact that this book defies all aspects of storytelling when it comes to a criminal investigation novel. The most important being that he gives us a long list of suspects and by the end just tells us who it is, Clef Treble. Someone we’ve never heard of until this point with a ridiculous name.

I’ve heard several theories as to why Dwight David Thrash decided to grace the world with the magical world of forensic accounting. From trying to woo a woman to just being bored at work one day. Regardless, reading this series has provided great joy and indescribable despair. With this book being the most joyous of them all.

If there are any willing to have fun with a bad book this one is certainly the one that offers the most entertainment in ways some might never thought possible. But beware, to those who might go down the Forensic Certified Public Accountant rabbit hole, the warm fuzzy feelings you might get will become less frequent, only to be replaced with volcanic rage at everything that makes this series irritating. The repetition only gets worse and if you think the absurd names get any better, I’ve got some bad news for you.

To all who rated this book one star, critically speaking, it deserves that. However, among the series of this Forensic Accounting world, it deserves five stars.

[Keith · Rating 1 out of 5]

Reading this made my brain feel like it was melting.

[Robin Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I actually won this KINDLE Edition of this book through an Amazon giveaway the author had back in July 2018 and the following is my honest opinion.

Besides being a book reviewer, I’m also an author. In addition to this, I’ve had a job as a Systems Analyst working for New York City and have written numerous items for a community of the course of several years.

Having written those items, it appears to me that the author, Dwight David Thrash, did actually have a story in his mind when he wrote this his debut novel, however the book is problematical. To begin with, instead of being of a fictional nature, there is too much of a journalistic style to the author’s writing, which itself needs a whole lot of editing so it reads well.

Having been a Systems Analyst, like the Forensic CPA protagonist of the story, I’d been drawn into doing a little analyzing of the book itself. The first thing that struck my eyes had been his overly repetitious use of the following:

“I, Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant,”

Using the KINDLE find mode I found 90 matches for the above, examining the locations of these 90 matches I found
Page 6 with 2 matches
Page 7 with 7 matches
Page 8 with 4 matches
Page 9 with 4 matches
Etc

Breaking Page 7 down to the location for the matches, they were found to be, according to KINDLE at locations 78, 80, 84, 87, 89, 90 and 91. This indicates that these matches had been found to be almost on top of each other, which slows down the actual reading process. There are basically no pronouns in the entire book, and scarcely any dialogue which have given some life to this fictional storyline

The book I believe has far too many distractions that prevents it from becoming a truly enjoyable reading experience, which is why I’ve given the book’s author only 3 STARS for his endeavor, primarily for having made the effort he made in writing it.

[Will · Rating 2 out of 5]

I kept on with this first person narrative by Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, in the forlorn hope that Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, would finally take it as read and stop reminding us that Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, assumes that we need to be reminded of the qualifications of Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, or that the PI hired on the team by Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, "used his private investigating skills", or that Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, is doing this in order that Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, may testify as a lay witness.

May serve as a primer to those who really, really want to know what a Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant does.

[Paige · Rating 5 out of 5]

This made me happy

A joy to read, a laugh riot! I even read some aloud to my husband. Enjoyed Thrash’s optimism and ability to bring humor to the exciting world of forensic accounting.

[Bryan Woerner · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read this as part of the podcast 372 Pages We’ll Never Get Back. It’s just, wow, that was bad and weird. Apparently there are more of these. Part of me wants to read them. Maybe or maybe not.

[Tiger Kress · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was so predictable and anticlimactic. After the first few chapters, you could tell where the story was going. Absolutely nowhere. Each chapter had a general layout like this: 1. Introduce some facts or people who is married to a woman and has children with very "unique" names and rant about it for a page or two. 2. Show how Titus Uno, certified public accountant, forensic certified public accountant, and chartered global management accountant and his forensic certified public accountant team, including Drew Samson, Dena Hope, and Veronica Jackson will interact with or solve the thing. 3. End the chapter and do it again. the author must have been under some influence to think that this book would be interesting and be considered a mystery book. There is no mystery if you just tell the reader that it was this guy called clef treble after going through 100 chapters of pointless character nonsense. The worst thing is that it doesn't say how Titus Uno, certified (jk), found out that it was Clef Treble. There was no climax. The story was cremated along with the 64-SQUARES building. The back story was as tall as the 64-SQUARES building but was as pointless as the cremated financial statements. the grammar and spelling was written by a 3rd grader. And worst of all, the only keys on his keyboard were probably just the control key, c key, and v key. This book is stupid trash. And to think he made 7 more books...

[John · Rating 0.25 out of 5]

This is the worst thing I’ve ever read in my life. I blame 372 pages I’ll never get back, the podcast about bad books, because I decided to read along with them. What a mistake I made.

The words “I, Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant” are burned into my brain. That exact passage must appear well over 50 times in the hundred page book and sometimes 3-4 times on a single page. It is an incomprehensible mess.

I’d mark the next part as spoilers but who cares? The whole book is just him saying how his team gathers evidence. I’m afraid you may have misunderstood me, it isn’t him describing them actually gathering evidence, I mean it is literally him just telling you they gathered it. Not what it is or how it’s relevant. We also get long rambling descriptions of irrelevant characters and finally at the end, the guilty party is revealed and we literally only learn of this characters existence when he’s revealed as the criminal and we don’t even get the whole crime explained until later, when the “story” is over.

This shouldn’t be allowed in print. I never agreed with banning books, however, in this case I will make an exception. Ban this books and its sequels. The author is a menace.

[Arnstein · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first book on Titus Uno: An introduction to a comedy series of repetition and self-aggrandisement in forensic accounting.

One of the idiomacies of The Forensic Certified Public Accountant series is the redundant duplication of information – titles in particular, but work arrangements and investigation goals are also treated that way. Among previous reviews of this book one finds a widespread opinion that this makes it hard to read, and this reviewer concurs. Pages forty to seventy-six, i.e. chapters nine to sixteen, is the worst section. Here the redundancies cover entire paragraphs, and approximately a third of every single chapter will be repeated in the next one.

Clearly, learning how to skim past the redundancies vastly improves the reading experience. Take one of the worst paragraphs as an example, (in order to improve legibility the text that ought to be read is here underlined while that which ought to be skipped past isn't):

Let me tell you a bit about myself starting with my education. I, Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, have many years of accounting education and experience that has prepared me for terrible international crime. Not bragging, but I, Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, graduated at the top of my class at college. My mentors helped me so much that when I, Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, graduated I had so many connections of people that I, could count on for the rest of my life. […] I, Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, have been so successful, that I am honored to be able to hire 3 people to work with me as members of my four Forensic Certified Public Accountant team, including myself I, Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, decided that I, Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, needed a global designation to be recognized and respected worldwide, so I, Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant, earned the Chartered Global Management Accountant designation. This designation plus my prior experience as a Certified Public Accountant and Forensic Certified Public Accountant helps me and my four member team, including myself, became the investigators in the “cat burglar terrorist” case. (pp. 6-8; errors as in the original text; brackets indicating where text has been removed for brevity)

Not every paragraph is like this, fortunately. The description of the case at hand is an example of this, and so it seems prudent to include it here and thereby to introduce the plot at the same time.

A "cat burglar terrorist", this is the name this criminal has been given so that everyone that is involved in this case will know that this case is the one that is being discussed, had broken into the high tech office building and blew it to rubbish. Before the explosion, the 64-SQUARES skyscraper was the tallest building in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada by two floors. The Living Shangri-La is 62-story hotel building and is the tallest skyscraper in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Fraud or an accounting procedure breakdown had occurred, so 64-SQUARES called in the best Forensic Certified Public Accountant, Titus Uno CPA FCPA CGMA, which just so happens to be me, myself, and I. (p. 6)

By now it should be readily apparent that Titus Uno tends to brag quite a bit, which makes for quite a bit of comedy when it turns out that he doesn't have anywhere near the kind of central position that he pretends to have – those who missed it, and it certainly can be easy to do so, can find it on the pages ninety-nine and one hundred. It's far from far fetched to consider him the Don Quixote of accounting, and this self-aggrandisement is what brings out much of the comedy. Also, there are almost childish comments like this one:

This high technology is exciting to use because spying on people is fun. (p. 18)

This comment was made in connection with the description of the technical gadgets and computer programs that the team intends to use to catch the “cat burglar terrorist”. It's probably a better explanation as to why the team keeps, presumably illegally, surveilling people and hacking their personal computers, than Titus Uno's repeated assurances that this is absolutely necessary.

The remaining characters also have something silly to them, such as the prosecutor being named Sharp Hatchet, and Jack “Sheriff” Starr who is a fan of western movies and whose ”favourite catch phrase is, 'Who is the sheriff of 64-SQUARES?'” (p. 40; errors as in the original text) Most of them, unfortunately, suffer from the flaw that they don't really do or add anything to the story. There is a kind of deadpan humour to this, but the reader will likely not get it until quite a way into the book.

Another idiomacy is related to the fact that Titus Uno loves his area of expertise. He really enjoys talking about it and the information he imparts here is sufficient to cover a short course on corporate accounting. English isn't this reviewer's native tongue and so they learned quite a bit of terminology from the book. Whether or not these sections constitute a tedium varies, sometimes they are dry and uninteresting, while other times a sense of humour shines through; a few don't even make sense at all:

Most of the time External Auditors perform Audits because it give an entity the people that rely on the financial statements that highest level of confidence that the financial statements do not reasonably contain “material misstatements.” (p. 69; errors as in the original text)

In conclusion, the potential reader of this book would do good to research it first and, if they choose to give it a try, to seek some readers that have previous experiences with it. This reviewer recommends learning to skim past the redundancies and learning not to dwell on passages that are either dull or nonsensical (unless they have sought it out for the nonsense). Even so the comedic gems are scattered and fewer than one could have wished for, and in this it just doesn't live up to its fame. That being said, some of my favourite strange quotes are from here, such as: ”once this contact is contact,” (p. 85, p. 87 (twice), p. 91; errors as in the original text) or “the guilty criminal can be protected by the prosecutor.” (p. 85)

If the excerpts from the other books in the series are to be believed then this one is likely the weakest among them. It may be that starting with one of them is a better introduction to the series than The Forensic Certified Public Accountant and the Cremated 64-SQUARES Financial Statements. If neither of them seems to be what one is looking for then a similar series might be recommended instead: that of the James Bond imitator Linus Holmes/James Malory/Perrie French (it has changed name a couple of times), and also here it's best to skip the first few books and begin at a high point (Women in Your Eyes would be a good one) to really get a feeling for the series.

[Scott · Rating 1 out of 5]

If not for 372 Pages, there's no way I could have gotten through this....

It reads like stories I wrote in grade school. After describing yet another member of this team: "It's nice that he has this job and a family."

There was no "story" because it also reads like a formal report submitted by an accountant. So many of the "chapters" followed a very rigid, very boring formula:

1) Introduce a new character.
2) Give some unnecessary detail about their life.
3) Announce Titus Uno's team by just saying their names and titles.
4) Go one by one through the team members that were just mentioned and describe their using whatever skill is relevant to do something generic (e.g. "so and so used their hacking skills to tap this person's phone").
5) Say this person might have to testify as [insert type of witness] at the trial.

Why are forensic accountants doing any of this? Shouldn't they just be reviewing....accounts?

Then, after all of this evidence gathering is presented (or, rather, just mentioned as something the team might do) the last two chapters just abruptly end the book with "this is what happened and these are the prison sentences".

Side note there: Really? The guy in HR who processed the termination of the employee responsible got jail time? That's...that's not how the law works. At all.

There were a few bits here and there that caused fits of laughter (it helped to read after taking edibles). But for the most part this was a trial to be endured rather than enjoyed. The constant "I, Titus Uno, [long list of annoying titles]" was utterly exhausting.

It's really hard to take this seriously, it's THAT bad.

[Michael · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was a shared read with Donald, another 372-Pages podcast selection. Were it not for 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back, there is no doubt that we never would have heard about this book, much less read it. But they chose it-- we read it-- and we'll never be quite the same again...

This book is unlike anything I've ever read before. It's truly one of a kind. (Well, apart from the fact that it's the first in a series of books that apparently are all very similar.)

You'll laugh! You'll cry (tears of frustration at the bizarre decision to copy and paste chunks of text so many times that you lose count)! You'll put the book down, stare into space, and ask yourself one simple question... Why? Just... why?

I wouldn't have finished this, were it not for the book club podcast. If you're a student of the absurd, there's a chance you might get something out of it, but if you're looking for a genuine mystery / crime thriller... Hm. Well, I'd keep looking.

For those whose interest has been piqued, the podcast is recommended-- as always, but particularly in this case, where you may need a little extra motivation to propel you through the umpteenth "I, Titus Uno..." and the seemingly endless parade of character introductions.

This was definitely one of the more bizarre things I've ever read.

[Raymond · Rating 1 out of 5]

I, Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered BBC Global Management Accountant.

I, Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant. I, Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant. I, Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant. I, Titus Uno, Certified Public Accountant, Forensic Certified Public Accountant, and Chartered Global Management Accountant. Total crap.

[Michael · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read with the 372 Pages podcast. Copy and pasted text, absurd attempt at character introduction and development, no plot...and I didn’t even learn anything about certified public accounting! Even the information about the oft repeated vocational acronyms was inaccurate - ever wonder what role a forensic CPA witness would serve at a trial? Me neither! But it turns out it’s the opposite of what is described about 700 times in this book. Still, the author has published more than I have. I’ll give him a star for that.

[Darren Nelson · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book broke my brain (not in a good way)

[Shelley · Rating 1 out of 5]

Save yourself.

[Joe Krellwitz · Rating 1 out of 5]

Yikes

[Aoi Shiori · Rating 1 out of 5]

So..... This is barely a book. Maybe this was transcribed from ramblings, or is an unfinished court dialogue... Whatever this is, it's insufferable.