All financial scandals follow the same form, more or less. Indeed, if their histories were laid end to end in the periods in which they occurred, the history of big money could be seen as one long, repetitive scandal.

All feature the same characters in the lead: greedy, arrogant men (always men), often greatly competent and capable of real achievements of a high order, who go bad when the pressure to continue to deliver exceeds their ability to do so.

In ?The Mystery of Overend & Gurney?, Bermuda-based author Geoffrey Elliott has recounted the story of one such scandal, which unfolded in the latter half of the 19th century in London.

The story of ?Overends?, as the bank was known, is a less well-trodden chapter in the book of frauds, and in some ways a more interesting one than some: for one thing, the guilty parties were Quakers.

That the cheats in question were upstanding religionists of a particular stripe is by no means unusual.

Men have justified greater seeming contradictions than God and Mammon; and besides, deep-seated beliefs in religion and the power of wealth tell us more about the believers than the beliefs. What is unusual is that Mr. Elliott?s is the first complete telling of the biggest bank collapse of Victorian times.

As the author rightly points out in an early chapter, mankind may be divided into two camps: those old enough to know what a Bill was (and still is) and those not.

To the former, the term referred to a Bill of Exchange, to cite its textbook name, and the central place it held in the world of money until about 40 years ago.

To everyone under the age of perhaps 50, the word Bill means an Act of Parliament, the British police force or, uncapitalised, an account of how much you owe for electricity or telephone this month.

Oldies know what a Bill was, alright. Having learned the definition by heart at the very start of my accounting education, I cannot resist reciting it, from memory, even though I have not thought of the subject in more than three decades.

A Bill of Exchange is an unconditional order in writing, addressed by one person to another, signed by the person giving it, requiring the person to whom it is addressed to pay on demand or at a fixed or determinable date a sum certain in money to or to the order of a specified person or bearer.

All the printed definition lacks is the sing-song rhythm with which students would reel it off its clauses.

A cheque can be described as a Bill due on presentation. Bills of longer duration, often 90 days, were literally the currency that made the London financial markets work, more or less until electronic money replaced them.

Bills were the money that made the world go around. Anyone could issue a Bill, and anyone could trade them, merely by signing them on to the next person.

If they could not be paid when they fell due, they could be renewed, if sufficient faith existed in the issuer.

Britain?s high street banks today, with familiar names such as HSBC, Lloyds and Barclays, are agglomerations of smaller banks that made their original living discounting (i.e. trading) Bills.

While Queen Victoria mourned her lost Albert, Overends was the largest such institution outside London, a pillar of East England society, famed as much for its rectitude as its comparative size.

With a dozen branches, it was, by the standards of its day, large indeed. Most banks had a single office then; few had more than two or three.

Overends went bad in the traditional manner, by marrying short-term financial responsibilities to long-term assets.

It invested money due soon into assets that could not be realised quickly, and when push came to shove, as it always does in the cyclical world of finance, Overends could not unravel its investments as quickly as it unravelled its reputation, goodwill and capital, try as it might to put off the day of reckoning.

In this well-written and accessible work, Mr. Elliott, who had an observer?s front seat at so many similar modern escapades during his career, wonders why and searches for the answer.

The early chapters of the book mill about like horses at the starting line, waiting for the off.

We meet Victorian Britain, London, the Quakers, money, some of the principal characters and other players in chapters loosely of their own, although facts jostle one another, including the bare bones of the story and an endless, often duplicated series of previews of what we are about to receive.

Quite where the actual story begins is hard to say; early on, the reader wonders if that might be the mystery of the book?s title.

A more linear author might have disposed of the first 100 pages altogether and replaced them with: ?Into mid-19th century Victorian Britain was born ?? and then spread the material around as it was needed.

But a more linear author did not write this impressive book, Mr. Elliott did. For many years a senior banker in London and on Wall Street, Mr. Elliott now lives in Bermuda and is numbered among our most distinguished authors.

He tells a good story, accumulates weight through detail, evokes a bygone age with ?lan, and keeps the reader interested throughout, although often in digressions as much as by means of the plot.

Of quibbles, but two present themselves. A better editor would have caught the misuse of apostrophes and commas that dog the odd page here and there, and would have adopted a more sensible strategy with the footnotes.

In this case, the footnotes have been placed behind the completed text, rather than appearing at the foot of the pages to which they relate. The interested reader is forever flipping backwards and forwards and losing his place, a disservice to the author.

Worse, in this case, given Mr. Elliott?s often-digressive style, the footnotes really are not footnotes, merely thoughts apparently arbitrarily chopped out of the text and parked elsewhere, so as not to frighten the horses.

Those ?nifles and trifles? apart (to use a lively phrase cited by the author), this financial ?mystery? is highly recommended to anyone interested in the power of vanity.

At a time when we live with the fresh wounds of Enron, WorldComm and others of their ilk, Mr. Elliott?s tale could not be more timely.