Red Team Blues—A Literary Fork in Proper Sterling

I love the book covers for Cory's books and this one is no exception! —Taken with an iPhone 8 

From Bitcoin to the Blockchain and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), Web3 is a source of both fascination and scandal throughout the past decade. Yet much like the moniker itself—which advocates say is a fork of Web 3.0*—the concept behind these solely digital “artifacts” is a task that only becomes more complicated as one tries to break down and define them. With cryptocurrency in particular, there have been reporters who documented its history—Nathaniel Popper wrote an account on Bitcoin in his 2016 book, Digital Gold—but what happens when you put crypto in a fictional setting where the “coins” take center stage?  

Red Team Blues is the latest novel from science fiction author, Cory Doctorow, which is also his first foray into thrillers with a reverse-chronological twist. It is a book that gives cryptocurrency the coin toss into the world of fiction with the help of its main character, forensic accountant Martin Hench. He might have a monotonous-sounding occupation, but his career has been anything but courtesy of his “red team” approach—seeking the weak point in security systems in order to expose scams and frauds for his clients. While his career may have been low-key, this book shows him at his peak as he contemplates retirement from his $800,000 tour bus, the Unsalted Hash. Yet, he finds himself with one more gig for his old friend and client, Danny Lazer, who wants Hench to find some cryptographic keys lying around on a laptop's hard drive.

Even when he finishes that job, its not truly over and Hench finds himself under the threat of his retirement being whisked away.

Cyberpunk novels may suffer from complicated, technical prose for reasons that cannot be helped, but Doctorow managed to keep me in suspense without getting bogged down in jargon. Hench, may be more of a tell, don’t show person, but it keeps the narrative anchored and moving while keeping the technical explanations as simple as possible. Not for a moment did I feel lost in this book and having Hench and Lazer explain cryptocurrency in a discussion was a huge help—not just in explaining the concept in full, but how it drives Martin Hench’s career alongside Lazer’s. Everything that would otherwise be a complicated mess gets linked together in the closest thing to a graceful looking daisy-chain of cables.   

The same thing can be said for how this books lays out Martin Hench’s life, but substitute the shortfalls of cyberpunk with the lack of an info-dump deluge. Everything about Martin Hench’s life—his friends and personality—makes sense throughout the narrative with just his monologue and ongoing conversations alone. I ended up being invested in Hench’s personal relationships as he fought for his life and it made the ending even more satisfying.

 Red Team Blues is a novel that manages to provide a clear glimpse into the life on a forensic accountant in what would be the last book of a normal trilogy without spoiling too much, if not anything. Hench’s speciality in dealing with cryptocurrency helps break down what these “coins” really are without the need to scrawl through social media chatrooms and web forums, or reading historical accounts like Digital Gold. Both of these aspects make Red Team Blues into a book I would recommend to anyone who wants to give cyberpunk a fair shot.   

In Sum: If this were any sort of currency, it would be solid gold—5 out of 5 Stars

If you already enjoyed the book, or like Wil Wheaton, he does the narration for the audiobook! 

*Or some sort of fork from the World Wide Web whether it's Web 1,2, or 3.0.