Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less

Jeffrey Archer's Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less begins with financier Harvey Metcalfe using a worthless oil venture to take a million dollars from four investors. The victims come from sharply different professions: Stephen Bradley is an Oxford academic, Robin Oakley a doctor, Jean-Pierre Lamanns an art dealer, and James Brigsley an aristocrat. Once they understand the fraud, they decide to recover exactly what he took.

Each man designs an operation around his own expertise and a setting where Metcalfe's confidence can be used against him. Their plan moves through medicine, art, Oxford ceremony, gambling, and finance, requiring the four strangers to become a coordinated team. Precise accounting gives the revenge its comic discipline: expenses matter because the promised result is exactly the original loss.

The novel is a caper about preparation instead of force. Professional knowledge becomes theatrical performance, and Metcalfe's appetite for status creates openings. This guide discloses the swindle and the team's penny-for-penny objective but leaves the individual operations, their complications, and the final balance sheet unresolved.