My reviewers suggested that books in which the hero is an accountant cannot count
on a popular acclaim, in contrast to books in which the hero is, for instance, a Harvard
professor of symbolism (as in Dan Brown’s books). It is certainly more difficult to
create a hero against a strong stereotype than a hero from a void (nobody knows what
professors of symbolism, if such exist, are like). Still, Dodge succeeded in just such an
endeavor, and he was not alone. Crumbley (1990/2009) and Crumbley et al. (1997) listed
quite a few books with accountant as a hero detecting fraud (with Collett’s Accosting
The Golden Spire, 1991, as the most successful among those). Also, Dodge’s Whitney
novels rate as good detective stories in their mystery and suspense, so the problem is
rather some anachronisms that make them inappropriate for present-day publishers.