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Text Box: Imagine reading a detective thriller that not only explains where to buy the best Far East jade but also how to handle your accounts receivable. The same book tells you where to find the most impressive Buddha in Burma — and gives you a good definition of the difference between those basic methods of inventory valuing known to accountants as LIFO and FIFO. Although it includes a daring helicopter heist aimed at the priceless gems of Rangoon’s richest pagoda, the book also takes you through the intricacies of depreciation. Sounds like Sam Spade got confused with a certified public accountant. Actually, its’ a tale concocted by Larry Crumbley, the Shelton taxation professor at Texas A & M University. He mixes fraud, crime, ethics and accounting as a painless way to learn about debits and credits. “Accosting the Golden Spire” is a witty, worthwhile little book about Lenny Cramer, a forensic accountant who discovers fraud, crime and romance in a friend’s jade shop and in the Far East. Mr. Crumbley’s pseudonym, “Iris Weil Collett” (IRS Will Collect) should give you an idea of his sense of humor and of his definitely less than solemn approach to his craft.

Text Box: In the book, Lenny, who teaches at the Wharton School, is baffled, bemused and bewitched by Dana Scott, who owns a gem shop in Philadelphia in partnership with Frank Harrison, a cagey consultant whom we learn to hate because of his penchant for malicious dirty tricks. Frank not only poisons a pet dog but ties it to a brick and throws it through a restaurant window. After meeting Lenny while on vacation in Burma, Dana asks his help in finding out whether Frank has been conspiring with suppliers to overcharge her shop. And as Lenny looks through Dana’s books, he is overcome by Dana’s looks. Watch out CPAs! Never mix business with pleasure. Meanwhile, as the happy couple gaze at more than 5,000 pagodas, temples and shrines, they discuss whether certain gains are taxable. Occasionally, the accounting lessons seem like non sequiturs. For example, just before a fellow professor of Lenny’s is killed by a Russell’s viper, we are told how traditional historical cost concept overstates income and understates assets. Fortunately for the reader, Mr. Crumbley has a sense of humor when it comes to accounting. At one point Dana says “accountants never die, they just lose their balance.” Lenny drinks

Text Box: coffee from a cup that says: “Love an Accountant: it’s Less Taxing.” The tale of Dana’s shop and the trips to the Far East are interspersed with easy-to-take “lessons” on limited liability, inventory management, the meaning of good will and other tenets of accountancy. For example, Lenny testifies to a congressional committee that a “corporation benefits from disclosure because it is more efficient for [it] to provide disclosure information about the stock — that is, the product — rather than for the consumer to obtain the information himself. In fact, there is much more likelihood of too much information being prepared — not too little.” Mr. Crumbley explains that “in a corporation, income increases an account called retained earnings, and dividends reduce retained earnings… Stock dividends present the illusion to the stockholder that he or she is receiving something, but in reality the corporation sacrifices no assets.” In explaining the concept of extraordinary losses and gains, Lenny uses the example of a volcano eruption, an event both unusual in nature and infrequent in occurrence. “An exception,” he