Someone will like this; I'm glad it exists; but I shouldn't have wasted my time reading it and idk why I'm going to read the next one.
2 stars
Considerably more tolerable than the last, but the bar is very very low. I hate Martin Hench. If he was a real person I'd be glad for his work and try to never interact or hear from him. Also, Christ, these books are awful to read as a class conscious vegan. So much meat! Doctorow's best fiction is Walkaway and that book is incredible ! Read it instead.
Content warning
No specific spoilers, but commentary which you might want to avoid if you want to read it wholly fresh.
Doctorow knew he was on to something when he came up with Marty Hench, and he was right.
Red Team Blues was Hench's last case, so this is an earlier one - set across more than a decade from the mid-2000s to the late teens. It includes Doctorow at his expositional best - wrapping explainers on class crime, financial crime, and corruption in light tissues of noir thriller in a way that will be leave your blood boiling and your guts churning with how despicable and unjust are the systems in which people are caught up in the States (in particular, California). (The particular problems associated with privatised prison systems are likely specific to the US, though general points about corruption in the legal and carceral systems are probably a bit more general.)
Hench himself keeps that same aura of competence porn and bloody-mindedness that makes him an appealing noir detective, and the pettiness and venality of his opponents I guess will likely be unavoidable across all of the stories we're likely to see here.
Doctorow presents an uncomfortable ending which was not supposed to satisfy, but to me was a little too weak on a key aspect such that it didn't quite land. All in all though, a good example of Doctorow doing what he does well.
"The Bezzle" (2024) is the latest fiction by Cory Doctorow. It's a clever and very relevant page-turning political tech thriller.
It's the second book featuring protagonist Martin Hench, a kind of digital detective who uncovers intricate corporate scams. The first was "Red Team Blues" (2023).
It's a prequel, even better than the previous one. It begins at the time of the internet bubble at the end of the 90s and goes up to the mid-2000s. The central plot involves the corrupt privatisation of the US prison system (which actually took place), creating a horrific techno-dystopian incarceration that would cause envy for today's big techs.
It's one of those books that's hard to put down, even though it lays descriptions even of the lustre of a tie or the filling of an unusual sandwich (makes you hungry).
As a bonus, there are some tasty psychedelic adventures. …
"The Bezzle" (2024) is the latest fiction by Cory Doctorow. It's a clever and very relevant page-turning political tech thriller.
It's the second book featuring protagonist Martin Hench, a kind of digital detective who uncovers intricate corporate scams. The first was "Red Team Blues" (2023).
It's a prequel, even better than the previous one. It begins at the time of the internet bubble at the end of the 90s and goes up to the mid-2000s. The central plot involves the corrupt privatisation of the US prison system (which actually took place), creating a horrific techno-dystopian incarceration that would cause envy for today's big techs.
It's one of those books that's hard to put down, even though it lays descriptions even of the lustre of a tie or the filling of an unusual sandwich (makes you hungry).
As a bonus, there are some tasty psychedelic adventures.
Cory, for those who don't know, as well as being a respected and popular speculative fiction writer, also works and writes non-fiction in the area of digital rights.
Es bastante distinto a Red Team Blues, la verdad, no sabría decir si me ha gustado más, pero si creo que traslada de manera más clara las ideas que Cory pretendía transmitir acerca de la privatización de las prisiones y cómo ciertas tecnologías abusivas se imponen primero al débil
A long windy preaching road that is still kind of fun
3 stars
Not nearly as good as book one, however, still enjoyable, and a decent adventure. You gotta get through part one though it goes on for a long while. it’s all about rich people behaving poorly and the set up absolutely pays off. But it is a substantial set up.
I learned a bunch about financial crime, I learned a bunch about the prison system, I learned a bunch about rich people. I’m still excited for book three, but I hope it learns its lessons from book two.
This might be the nearest I've ever come to "near-past historical thriller fiction". Interesting story, but the ending felt a bit sudden and unfulfilling.
It starts slow, but this thriller becomes special once the protagonist is taking on the prison industrial complex, with commentary on DRM and financial fraud thrown in for good measure.
