With the release of the third book in the series, this month we're shinging a light on the Martin Hench Novel series by Cory Doctorow. Exploring Silicon Valley from the perspective of the eponymous forensic accountant, this series offers bounty hunting thrills from the world of tech corporations, startups, Fortune 500s and so much more. 

We're thrilled to share these books as our Series of the month so keep reading to learn a little bit more about where we are with Martin Hench's Story...

The Martin Hench Novels so far

Starting with Red Team Blues this 2024 Locus Award Finalist for Best SF Novel introduces Martin Hench. It's a sensational sci-Fi techno-thriller following the most accomplished forensic accountant. Hench's carreer in tech is nearly as old as Silicon Valley and now he's on the trail of a stolen key that unlocks an illicit backdoor to billions in Crypto. In cyber security, the Red Team plays attack and Blue Team plays defence. Hench was born to play attack but while on the search for the stolen ket he'll have to play defence to save his skin. 

Described by our Editorial Expert, Joanne Owen as a "super-succinct, super-thrilling ride of a read set in the moneyed microclimate of Silicon Valley". 

The second book in the series is The Bezzle. It's 2006 and Marty Hench is at the top of his game as a self-employed forensic accountant. During a vacation on Catalina Island Marty disrupts an innocuous scheme and kicks off a chain of events that will overtake the next decade of his life. 

"Told in retrospect, with occasional interjections from Marty later in life, The Bezzle is an entertaining story that makes many pertinent critiques of capitalism along the way." The Bezzle is a red-hot follow up to Red Team Blues.

Picks and Shovels is Cory Doctorow's third Marting Hench novel, set at the birth of Silicon Valley in San Francisco in 1986. In a company-eat-company city, Martin is an MIT dropout odd-jobbing his way round a city still reeling from the invention of revolutionary new tech. Hired by a Silicon Valley startup to investigate a group of disgruntled ex-employees who've founded a competitior, hench realises he's on the wrong side, but he has no idea of the depth of the evil they're seeking to uproot. 

"It’s entertaining, and often thought-provoking, as it lays bare crime and corruption in the sneakily cut-throat spheres of finance and tech, with this third novel arguably the most enjoyable Hench novel yet."

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Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist and journalist. He is the author of many books, most recently The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation, a Big Tech disassembly manual; Red Team Blues, a science fiction crime thriller; Chokepoint Capitalism, non-fiction about monopoly and creative labour markets; the Little Brother series for young adults; In Real Life, a graphic novel; and the picture book Poesy the Monster Slayer. In 2020, he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

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