Book

An Unusual Complaint

Book 2 in The Bureau of Small Solutions

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by Mel Crawford

The Bureau of Small Solutions is, by any reasonable measure, working. The building is Sylvie Corde's in every sense that matters. Case 017, the Salt Road Toll, a gate that has been faithfully collecting from an empty road for twenty-two years, is exactly the kind of patient, specific problem she came to Thrisk for. Then Assessor Renne Voss arrives from the Western Reach with a mandate, a thorough methodology, and eight years of professional history with Sylvie that neither of them has addressed. The assessment is legitimate. The assessor is reasonable. The problem is that reasonable and thorough, applied carefully to the jurisdictional situation in Thrisk, will find the one person in the building who has something to hide. Sylvie knows how to manage an assessment. What she hasn't worked out is whether managing the assessment is the same thing as protecting the people she is managing it for, and whether, once you know the answer, you can claim you didn't. The second book in the Bureau of Small Solutions series: warm, wry, and concerned with the particular difficulty of knowing what you owe to the things you've built.

Publication date: May 22, 2026