"Righteously satisfying...A fascinating tale of financial skullduggery, long cons, and the delivery of ice-cold revenge." - Booklist on The Bezzle
"Robert Heinlein was always known—and always came across in his writings—as The Man Who Knew How the World Worked. Doctorow delivers the same sense of putting yourself in the hands of a fellow who has peered behind Oz’s curtain. When he fills you in lucidly about some arcane bit of economics or computer tech or social media scam, you feel, first, that you understand it completely and, second, that you can trust Doctorow’s analysis and insights. That makes for a great reading experience." - Locus on The Bezzle
"It’s a novel of issues, presented as they should be, detail by devastating detail. The issues and ideas are this novel’s warp, the specificity and sometimes surprising emotional truths its weft." Maria Farrell on The Bezzle
"Cory Doctorow is one of our most important science fiction authors."
Kim Stanley Robinson
"Cory Doctorow doesn't just write about the futureI think he lives there!"
Kelly Link
"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
12/01/2023
When readers left cyber detective and forensic accountant Martin Hench at the end of Red Team Blues, he was settling down in a well-deserved retirement. This book finds Marty taking a trip down memory lane to the heyday of the Silicon Valley dot-com boom in the early 2000s, when he exposed a fast-food scam, and relating a fascinating tale of financial skullduggery, long cons, and the delivery of ice-cold revenge. Marty's reminiscences range from obscure financial machinations to heaping helpings of social commentary but always move the underlying thriller story forward in a backwards heist tale that delivers a righteously satisfying ending to the surprise of both the reader and the villain. This novel, like his previous outing, rides on Marty's voice. He has a jaundiced view of everything, but he tells it with such style and verve that readers are caught up and ride along on the surface until the shark beneath the water jumps out and bites the villain where it hurts. Doctorow well knows the world he skewers here, having written extensively about tech-sector monopolies, the ethics of the internet, and the state of copyright and creativity in the digital age (including in two recent nonfiction books, The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation and Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back). VERDICT Readers who love heist and caper stories will fall under Marty's spell.—Marlene Harris