Red Team Blues

by Cory Doctorow

Hardcover, 213 pages

English language

Published April 25, 2023 by Tor Books.

ISBN:: 978-1-250-86584-7
ASIN:: 1250865840

(74 reviews)

A grabby next-Tuesday thriller about cryptocurrency shenanigans that will awaken you to how the world really works.

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.

A grabby next-Tuesday thriller about cryptocurrency shenanigans that will awaken you to how the world really works.

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.

4 editions

writh reviewed Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow (Martin Hench, #1)

Move over heart-throbe protagonists, an elderly accountant has arrived

5 stars

Seriously. Martin Hench is a fantastic character. There is nothing about him or his journey through this novel that I would change.

As always, Doctorow has gotten all of the details right. As an infosec professional, I appreciate that level of research and commitment to verisimilitude. This is a fast paced thriller about... financial and tech crime... I know that sounds weird, and it is even weirder that the main character is essentially an accountant, but it works so well.

I also love that he's old. He's been around the block a time or 7. He knows his shit. He's the last of a dying breed. The computing revolutionaries from MIT. He was at the cutting edge of forensic computing and accounting. But those days are long in his past. Now he's dealing with cryptocurrency. The blockchain. All that other gross crap that tech-bros have come up with. But he's …

Seriously. Martin Hench is a fantastic character. There is nothing about him or his journey through this novel that I would change.

There are so many deep characters in this book. A lot of them would be worthy of their own novels. None of the side characters or relationships seem fake or two dimensional.

Overall, if you like mysteries or thrillers, are into tech, or just love good character driven books, this is for you.

outofrange reviewed Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow (Martin Hench, #1)

I love a thriller with aging characters

4 stars

And a crypto plot that holds up, and I learned about secure enclaves. Some RV life, and of course scammers galore. Sign me up for the next one.

Mark de Vries reviewed Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow (Martin Hench, #1)

Good solid story

4 stars

Liked this story. Funny, imaginative and gives a little peek into the big money laundering, off-shoring and cryptocurrency business.

Jorge Sanz reviewed Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow (Martin Hench, #1)

Para nerds

4 stars

La novela no pasa el test de Bechdel porque va de un señor mayor en su súper autocaravana haciendo de detective friki. Muchas referencias tecnológicas de todo tipo que creo que sólo harán gracia a los que estamos en el sector y eso sin entrar en la parte sobre criptomonedas.

Si lees el blog del autor la novela entera son referencias a sus temas favoritos.

Courts reviewed Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow (Martin Hench, #1)

Quick Read

5 stars

This was an amusing and quick read. I guess it works best for the of us who are able to follow the tech jargon or even work in IT Sec, even though it is not necessary to follow the plot. I think you might find the book a bit lacking otherwise, because there are no big "what ifs" in this book like for example in Walkaway or Lost Cause. Still, for me it's five stars.

kholerik reviewed Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow (Martin Hench, #1)

None

1 star

Unreadable for me. It's just a huge infodump showing off the author's knowledge and research, vaguely disguised by adding dialogue. But then the people talk like no real person I've ever met. DNF on page 17, that's how bad it is.

xylogx reviewed Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow (Martin Hench, #1)

Loved it

5 stars

Just finished reading the new Cory Doctorow book, "Red Team Blues." It is a gripping story about cryptography and the world of dark finance. I really enjoyed it and highly recommend it.

bookwyrm

Just finished reading the new Cory Doctorow book, "Red Team Blues." It is a gripping story about cryptography and the world of dark finance. I really enjoyed it and highly recommend it.

bookwyrm

kieranimo reviewed Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow (Martin Hench, #1)

Cheesy in a good way

4 stars

This was entertaining, and grabbed me more than I expected it to. I liked the story, the noir style and tone, and the tech landscape it’s set in. Sure, it’s obvious that the protagonist is a bit of an author surrogate/fantasy and that made some moments kinda … cringe… but I was hooked firmly enough that they were only minor road-bumps.

rsf92@lectura.social reviewed Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow (Martin Hench, #1)

No apto para criptobros

4 stars

No te va a molar si piensas que el blockchain lo soluciona todo. Por lo demás el libro está bien, pero me parece que falla un poco al final, un poco apresurado/rápido como resuelve todo.

k-zo da snowman reviewed Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow (Martin Hench, #1)

Web 3.0 Noir

5 stars

Punchy, captivating neo-noir set in the midst of crytobro and billionair folly. Read it.

Braden Solt reviewed Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow (Martin Hench, #1)

A Truly Modern Whodunnit

5 stars

Martin Hench is forensic accountant who plays by his own rules and lives out of his own recreational vehicle. I found this book to be an easy and thrilling read. Looking forward to seeing what happens next!

Soh Kam Yung reviewed Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow (Martin Hench, #1)

An interesting thriller that cries out for more technical details to be included.

3 stars

An interesting thriller involving the super rich of Silicon Valley hiding and moving their money around to make more money, and an investigative accountant who works to penetrate the surrounding defences.

In tech-speak, he's a Red Team person who hates to be one defending the accounts against attacks (Blue Team). But in this story, as he works to recover some lost digital keys before they can be used to manipulate digital financial ledgers that should not be alterable, he finds himself in the middle of a dispute between money-laundering families, and is marked for death for acts that he didn't commit. Now, he has to become a Blue Team person, defending against the attacks of the thugs out to get him. But the solution to his problem may involve being a Red Team member again.

A fast moving story with interesting technical details about cryptocurrencies, security and living among the …

A fast moving story with interesting technical details about cryptocurrencies, security and living among the rich and the homeless. However, the story does skip putting in more details that might bore the average layman, but would give more technical depth to the story and make it feel just a little less 'hand wavy' in the way the story get resolved.

Apollo reviewed Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow (Martin Hench, #1)

A Different Kind of Thriller

4 stars

This is a kinetic thriller dealing with cryptocurrency, organized crime, and homelessness. I'm not typically drawn to thrillers without some splash of speculative fiction mixed in heavily, but Doctorow has created something special here that will bring me back for the next two novels in this series.

loppear reviewed Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow (Martin Hench, #1)

I'm so jaded about SV and wealth

3 stars

A cute techno-thriller, this time focused on an aging retiring accountant rather than a YA scene, and the usual cogent and analytical depictions of today's hyped technologies and social implications. In this case, when money is no object, which cheapens most of the choices.

Don reviewed Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow (Martin Hench, #1)

Review of 'Red Team Blues' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Fun story of the precautions the main character did to hide his tracks from powerful people that were looking for him. That being said the story didnt have the overarching lesson or message that Doctorow's books normally have such as avoiding copyright over-reach. This was just a good story about electronic surveillance with some cryptocoin elements.