Dunces with Wolves

Jacket text for Dunces with Wolves

When it comes to money, Bernard Jones is a bit of a dunce. The retired civil servant and amateur investor discovers that when share prices start plunging his wealth falls even faster. As the credit crunch bites, he and his share club cronies at the Ring o'Bells pub find they can't bank on a bank, build wealth on a housebuilder, nor rely on a retailer.

Bernard can, however, rely on his domineering wife Eunice. A woman of persistent passion and advancing dress size, she single-handedly keeps Britain's consumer spending alive. From sustainable teak gnocchi spoons to Andalucian macramé shoe organisers, there isn't much you can teach Eunice about stocking up on essentials.

Though Eunice runs the household with a rod of organic celery, Bernard is never quite defeated. His elevenses of biscuits and cakes may be switched for endive and papaya salad, his prostate prodded, his railway modeling hobby ridiculed, but he comes out fighting.

With a mordant eye and caustic pen, he goes in to battle not just against the injustices of marriage, but on behalf of the financially downtrodden everywhere.

For those who lost money on Northern Rock, those who were short-changed by Equitable Life and those who were gobbled up by the wolves of the stock market, Bernard Jones is your champion, an anti-hero for our age of over-achievement.

Chapter headings for Dunces with Wolves

1. Scissors and suffering
2. Minimum wage
3. Sooty and Sweep
4. Pizza the action
5. Nasdaq the dog
6. Crème de la Crème
7. New Year Resolutions
8. Chinese Ordeal
9. A Tough Delivery
10. Antichrist Antics
11. Special Excursion
12. Grain of truth
13. Coining it!
14. Monsters from Hell
15. Car Alarm
16. Hug a Hoodie
17. Dunces with Wolves
18. Fingers in the Drawer
19. Equitable treatment
20. Dot Goes Missing

About Nick Louth

Nick Louth is a financial journalist, author and investment commentator. He has regular columns in the Financial Times, the Investors Chronicle and on MSN Money website. His first book, an investment guide called Multiply your Money was published by McGraw Hill in November 2001. The Investment Diary of Bernard Jones followed in February 2007 and a novel, Bite, in October 2007. The second volume of the Bernard Jones Diaries, Bernard Jones and the Temple of Mammon, was published in November 2007. Nick Louth is married and lives in Lincolnshire.

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