Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow
book, review
5/5 stars
Red Team Blues is a short but fantastic ride from start to finish. Marty Hench, a 67 year old accountant who specialises in uncovering Silicon Valley fraud and financial shenanigans gets one last job before retiring. A job that will let him retire.
It seems easy enough at first: find who stole cryptographic keys that would compromise a massive cryptocurrency network. But then bad stuff happens, more people get involved and in the end it’s about far more that the mere $1bn of value in the network.
The book is pure plot, never a dull moment. It carries a high risk of pulling you in and not letting you stop until you’ve finished.
In a bit of a departure from Cory’s regular work, it’s less focused on the actual tech (though there’s still plenty at the core) and more on the human aspect and the investigation. I found that worked really well here.
I’ve had lots of fun and while there’s nothing earth-shattering in it, the book’s an excellent read and I’m happy there are more books (prequels) planned. And it stayed in my mind for weeks afterwards.
Wil Wheaton reads the audiobook and as always, does an amazing job of it.
This review was originally posted at Goodreads and imported here later on with next to no spell/grammar checking.
