Letters to a Compliance Officer | Team Shaw Caribbean Press

The first compliance practitioner memoir.

Letters to a Compliance Officer
What They Never Told You About the Job That Protects Everyone

by Theon Alleyne, CRCP, CCEP

28 personal letters to a fictional compliance officer named Alex. Part field guide, part memoir, part mentor in print. Written from inside the rooms where the real decisions happen.

Ebook USD 9.99 (ISBN 978-976-97742-3-0). Paperback USD 18.99 (ISBN 978-976-97742-2-3). 14 platforms worldwide.

Published April 5, 2026 by Team Shaw Caribbean Press.

Where to buy

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About the book

Most books about compliance are written by lawyers, regulators, or academics. This one is not. Letters to a Compliance Officer is the first memoir written by a working compliance practitioner, addressed to the next generation that will inherit the job.

Compliance literature tells you what to do. It does not tell you what it feels like to sit in a room where the CEO does not want to hear you, or how to survive when the board overrides your advice, or what to do in a small economy where the person whose transaction you flagged attends your regulator's church.

The book is structured as twenty-eight letters from a senior compliance officer to a fictional new hire named Alex. The letters draw on enforcement cases from across the Caribbean and West Africa. Names are changed. Patterns are not. If you have ever sat in a compliance seat in Georgetown, Lagos, Port of Spain, Nairobi, or any other Global South financial center, you will recognize the rooms in this book.

It is positioned as the first compliance practitioner memoir ever published, the first compliance book written from a Caribbean perspective, and a practitioner-written work in a market dominated by textbooks.

Read it for the war stories. Keep it for the framework underneath them.

"Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal. This had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself."

— Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich (the book's opening epigraph)

What's inside. Five parts. Twenty-eight letters.

Before the career decision. What the profession actually demands, and whether you are ready to choose it with clear eyes.

Building your toolkit. How to read a regulation, assess risk, reason through grey areas, and carry the moral weight.

The reality nobody prepared you for. Boardroom battles, isolation, political pressure, and the compliance officer as scapegoat.

From competent to authoritative. Writing reports that get read, conducting investigations, and using technology without losing judgment.

What you leave behind. Building teams from nothing, mentoring the next generation, and what this career builds in you.

The vision: In ten years, this should be the book that a compliance manager in Kingston, Accra, Georgetown, or Manila gives to a new hire on their first day. Not instead of the manual. Before it.

Who this book is for

- Compliance officers and AML professionals navigating real-world pressure
- Students exploring careers in risk, regulation, and governance
- CEOs, boards, and executives who want to understand what their compliance teams face
- Banks, fintechs, regulators, and public sector institutions
- ACAMS, ICA, CAMS, and CCEP certification candidates looking for practitioner depth
- Conference directors, trainers, and compliance educators
- International business journalists covering Caribbean regulatory and financial topics

About the author

Advance praise. What peers and professionals are saying.

"A timely and necessary contribution that reframes compliance from a back-office function to a core pillar of institutional integrity and accountability."

— Clinton Urling, DBA
International Private Sector Executive

"Theon Alleyne pulls back the curtain on the real pressures, decisions, and consequences that define the role. Compliance is often seen as a back-office function, until something goes wrong."

— Andrew Waxman
Author, Rogues of Wall Street (Wiley)

"A good foundation to help understand the importance of what the compliance function does, and why it is such a critical function."

— Michael Bernardo, PhD
Professor and Former Compliance Officer

"Letters to a Compliance Officer captures the judgment, integrity, and pressure at the heart of compliance, and explains it with the clarity and honesty you'd expect from a great mentor."

— Devon Pinder, MBA, CAMS
Founding Director, Association of Compliance Professionals of Guyana

Book details

What journalists are saying

[TBD: La Caribeña News coverage links land here as features publish. First feature scheduled for Q2 2026. International press placements via the LCN journalist network will be added as they appear. Until then, leave this block empty or hide it.]

Stay close to the book.

Author Q&A, reading guides for compliance teams, and an occasional letter from Theon.

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