The Clerical Error

The mob wants him dead. The government insists he is safe. Norbert Pilch would like both statements corrected in writing. For seventeen years, Norbert has reconciled invoices at Wolverine Drywall Supply with the conviction that civilization depends on matching purchase orders to receiving reports. He takes lunch at 12:10. He leaves at five. His stapler has a label. His life has procedures, and the procedures work. Then two U.S. marshals arrive at his desk and inform him that he is a protected federal witness. This is news to Norbert. He has witnessed no crime and agreed to testify against no one. His most significant encounter with the alleged mob boss involved the pasta aisle at Meijer. Nevertheless, the government gives him a new name, moves him to a frozen Michigan lakeside town, and instructs him to forget his old life. Norbert files a request for correction. The government files Norbert. Now Gordon Pell, a man who knows perfectly well that he is Norbert Pilch, must survive an organization that cannot admit a mistake and another that would prefer to bury it. His handlers call this protection. Norbert has begun keeping a log. Meanwhile, Marcy Falcone has a problem with a deadline. The family business is under federal scrutiny, her father is awaiting trial, and an obscure accounts-payable clerk has become a threat to operations. Marcy believes in assigned responsibilities, measurable outcomes, and eliminating obstacles. Her murder plan has a Gantt chart. Unfortunately, her chosen operative is Teddy Bucklin, a former HVAC technician whose professional development needs include autonomy. Teddy can explain a furnace filter. His qualifications for killing a stranger are considerably less persuasive. As the wrong man settles into the wrong life, Norbert finds work at a hardware store and discovers that his refuge has problems of its own. Bingo receipts do not reconcile. Fish-fry money has gone missing. Local government operates on rules apparently written during an argument and preserved out of spite. Norbert does what he always does. He checks the paperwork. Soon he has irritated a treasurer, baffled a hit man, and made himself indispensable to people who never knew they needed a man who counts things twice. He has also begun to suspect that the invoices he rejected back home may explain why someone wants him gone. Back in Saginaw, Denise Kowalczyk has spent years pretending to type while paying close attention to the man across the aisle. Now his chair is empty, his records are vulnerable, and the people asking questions about him are asking the wrong ones. Denise has had enough of waiting for someone else to notice. Between a stubborn clerk, a woman who knows what is worth keeping, and a deputy developing inconvenient doubts about his assignment, a clerical error is becoming something nobody can comfortably file away. But the closer Norbert gets to the truth, the less protection his new identity provides. Someone is watching the hardware store. Someone is studying his routine. And somewhere in a spreadsheet, his name occupies a row with a deliverable nobody intends to explain to him. THE CLERICAL ERROR is a comic crime novel about dangerous people with business plans, decent people with bad instructions, and a man who refuses to sign off on something that is wrong. Bureaucratic absurdity meets criminal incompetence in a story of mistaken identity, missing money, stubborn loyalty, and the unexpected courage of doing an ordinary job extraordinarily well. Norbert is not an action hero. He has no weapon, no secret training, and no intention of becoming interesting. He does have the originals.