Red Team Blues - (Martin Hench Novels) by Cory Doctorow

About the Book

"Martin Hench is 67 years old, single, and successful in a career stretching back to the beginnings of Silicon Valley. He lives and roams California in a very comfortable fully-furnished touring bus, The Unsalted Hash, that he bought years ago from a fading rock star. He knows his way around good food and fine drink. He likes intelligent women, and they like him back often enough. Martin is a-contain your excitement-self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerilla war between people who want to hide money, and people who want to find it. He knows computer hardware and software alike, including the ins and outs of high-end databases and the kinds of spreadsheets 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 world-level expert on the kind of international money-laundering and shell-company chicanery used by Fortune 500 companies, mid-divorce billionaires, and international drug gangs alike. He also knows the Valley like the back of his hand, all the secret histories of charismatic company founders and Sand Hill Road VCs. Because he was there at all the 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. Now he's been roped into a job that's more dangerous than anything he's ever agreed to before-and it will take every ounce of his skill to get out alive."

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"Another winner from an sf wizard." --Booklist on Red Team Blues

"Absorbing and ruthless." --Library Journal on Red Team Blues

"A cleareyed warning...With unconventional gumshoe Martin at the helm, fans can expect good things from the series to come."
--Publishers Weekly on Red Team Blues

About the Author

Cory Doctorow is a regular contributor to the Guardian, Locus, and many other publications. He is a special consultant to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an MIT Media Lab Research Associate and a visiting professor of Computer Science at the Open University. His award-winning novel Little Brother and its sequel Homeland were New York Times bestsellers. His novella collection Radicalized was a CBC Best Fiction of 2019 selection. Born and raised in Canada, he lives in Los Angeles.