Red Team Blues

LoveReading Says

Red Team Blues, Cory Doctorow’s acclaimed first Martin Hench novel, is a sensational sci-fi techno-thriller that transcends genres to present a crisply-voiced, finely-plotted story of cyberworld deception, crypto corruption, money-laundering mayhem and dirty drug cartel dealings. 

At 67, Martin’s hugely successful career as a forensic accountant stems back to the founding of Silicon Valley. As a result, he knows everything there is to know about the folks who hide money, the folks who want to find it, and the kinds of measures both sets of folks take to achieve their respective goals. 

For sure, Martin’s the kind of unique character you won’t have previously encountered on the page, or in real life, for that matter. A single guy who lives in a fully-furnished tour bus that used to belong to a rock star, Martin has always played an attacking role on the red team. But now, on a mission to find the key that’ll unlock a fortune in crypto currency, he finds himself forced to play on the blue team in defence: “when you’re on the blue team, you’ve got to be perfect, and the red team… merely has to find a single mistake”.

Terse and tense, Red Team Blues is a noir-ish page-turner, but not quite as you know them — it’s a super-succinct, super-thrilling ride of a read set in the moneyed microclimate of Silicon Valley.

Reviewed by Joanne Owen
Joanne Owen’s lifelong love of reading and writing began when she was growing up in Pembrokeshire, and very much wished that witches (and Mrs Pepperpot) were real.
More reviews by Joanne Owen

About Red Team Blues

New York Times bestseller Cory Doctorow's Red Team Blues is a grabby next-Tuesday thriller about cryptocurrency shenanigans that will awaken you to how the world really works. Martin Hench is sixty-seven years old, single, and successful in a career stretching back to the beginnings of Silicon Valley. He's a--contain your excitement--self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long war between people who want to hide their money and people who want to find it. He knows the ins and outs of financial records that are designed to conceal rather than reveal. He's as comfortable with social media as people a quarter his age, and he's a fingertip-level expert in the techniques of money laundering and shell-company games practiced by Fortune 500 companies, extremely-divorced billionaires, and international crime lords alike. He also knows all the secret histories of charismatic company founders and Sand Hill Road VCs, because he was there at all of their beginnings. He's not famous, except to the people who matter. He's made some pretty powerful people happy in his time, and he's been paid pretty well. It's been a good life. He's always been on the red team, the attacking side, hunting down grifters, fraudsters, and crooks. In this kind of combat, the defenders, the blue team, have to win 100% of the time, while the red team needs to win only once. But now, Martin's been roped into a job that's more dangerous than anything he's ever done before, and worse, he's playing on the blue team. It'll take every ounce of his skill to get out alive. Sparkling, fast-moving, and endlessly engaging, Red Team Blues is a novel for anyone with a lively curiosity about how today's world actually works.

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