Cory Doctorow está teniendo bastante éxito con su serie sobre Martin Hench. Las dos entregas anteriores fueron una lectura muy entretenida, así que no es nada raro que cuando Picks and Shovels cayó en mis manos la leyera enseguida.


En esta ocasión la obra nos cuenta una parte de la juventud de Martin. Doctorow refleja muy bien lo que es enamorarse de un hobby, en este caso los ordenadores, de forma que te ciega ante todo lo demás, dejando atrás estudios, compañeros… pero encontrando otras cosas. Martin va a Boston a estudiar ingeniería en el MIT, pero esta obsesión con los nuevos computadores, con el hexadecimal, las hojas de cálculo y con el hardware le hará tener que cambiar de especialidad. El caso es que no le va nada mal, a pesar de los problemas con su familia por sus resultados escolares. Su particular perfil, con conocimientos informáticos en un mundo muy desconocedor del tema y su especialización en contabilidad le dota de una inusual capacidad que le servirá para ganarse la vida muy bien en el futuro, como vimos en los otras novelas. Pero en esta que nos atañe Martin es un proyecto de adulto, un muchacho sin moldear, así que se puede considerar que esta historia es su rito de paso.

Martin acaba en California tras una convulsa etapa en Boston y tendrá una entrevista de trabajo que parece el comienzo de un chiste, cuando le quieren contratar para una empresa liderada por un rabino ortodoxo, un sacerdote católico y un mormón. Tienen una empresa de informática basada, aparentemente, en las ventas a sus comunidades de fieles, pero se enfrentan a un problema con una escisión de la empresa liderada por tres mujeres de cada religión. Como digo el comienzo parece de chiste, pero el desarrollo no lo es.

El autor canadiense explora muchas de sus obsesiones en el libro, desde su odio profundo al hardware y software propietario, a su defensa de las drogas recreativas o la historia de San Francisco. A pesar de ser un libro muy entretenido, tiene algunos altibajos en el desarrollo, algunos momentos de status quo que bajan el ritmo de la lectura. No obstante, sus 400 páginas se leen en un suspiro.

Cuando hablé de Polostan, hice hincapié en lo que Cory Doctorow consideraba ciencia ficción y según su definición Picks and Shovels entra dentro del género. Para mí, es más un thriller con un elevado componente tecnológico para la época en la que se desarrolla. Pero aunque diferimos en cómo encasillarlo, sin duda recomiendo la lectura, porque es ágil e instructiva.

Picks and Shovels is the third book in a series about a Forensic accountant and I was really intrigued by an accountant holding big money to account. There are some elements of this in Picks and Shovels, but this story is an origin story -how did Martin Hench come to be.
The story starts from his teenage years where he develops a love for tech and how he ends up a forensic accountant and the people he meets along the way. Martin is an engaging character, a man with flaws and a man trying to help others. The writing flows easily and is a joy to read.
The women in the book are particularly interesting, these women break out of the roles expecting and it was fascinating to read about the Equality Act and how women may have reacted against this despite the advantages ( something that resonates in these times).
This is a historical tech novel so there is a focus on the emerging technology of the time some of which went above my non-techie mind!
I haven’t read the first two Martin Hench books ( but they are on my list) so I think this book would have been more enjoyable if I had.
Content Warning
References to sexism, homophobia, racism

This is the third Martin Hench novel, where it looks like Doctorow is testing the viability of building a non-sequential series about a forensic accountant. I read the first Red Team Bluesm which ends up hinging more on online security and is set in the modern day, but missed The Bizzle, apparently set in 2006 (I will hunt it down though). This third novel is a bit of an origin story for his lead, Martin Hench, a forensic accountant turned computer security expert, but here a neophyte programmer cum accountant. And almost as much time is spent fleshing out how Hench has his peculiar set of skills (accountancy and programming), and then fitting him into a quite clear good guys / bad guys scenario at the dawn of the tech era.

Hench falls in love with computing when he gets to MIT at age 18. Devouring the magazines, programming early machines obsessively to the degree he eventually flunks out. Discovering that the accountancy course has access to a bunch of early Apples, he does that, while running a pretty shonky business on the side. And so we have a programmer, an accountant, a burnt businessman, and a few friends (his friend Art who is a significant plot driver in Red Team Blues is a core character). Once that is out of the way Doctorow manages to set up a grungy techno-thriller that ticks a lot of his soapboxes: namely a tech firm that sells bad machines that aren't cross-compatible - a solid stand to fight for creative commons. The bad computer company makes machines for faith communities (it is run by a Rabbi, a Catholic and a Mormon - spreading the blame across faiths). Against them are three women of faith, their best saleswomen and much better programmers who hate the scam they have been selling, and try to atone. The women in tech side is solidly reminiscent of Halt And Catch Fire (which is high praise from me), and also allows Doctorow to engage in conversations about tolerance in faith and others. Indeed its 1986 San Francisco setting also means they can tip into historical issues around gay bashing, and even when the story starts delving into organised crime and violence, and core distrust of the police.

What's charming about Picks And Shovels, which I hoovered down in a day, is that its lead is not fully formed. He makes plenty of mistakes, in business, in life and love. And even at his most didactic, Doctorow comes off as helpful - Hench learns to be a better listener as the book goes on and it's quite clear that this is a key skill that the author thinks has been lost in the world. The most fun aspect is how this is a period tech novel, which invents a company and a scam that feels more than plausible, and even if the good guys here might be too good to be true, the Wild West process of early computing is captured perfectly.

This book was very well written and engaging while drawing from plenty of grounded historical context.

As a compsci nerd myself I really enjoyed this prequel book about computers and culture from the 80s. A time when knowing anything about computers was a super power and nobody knew just how much they would change the world. Hench managed to weave this pivotal historical moment in with a gripping plot of good intentions and bad decisions.

After the first two Marty Hench books, I was really excited for this one. Doctorow crafted really interesting and smart PI novels for the modern age that were a mix of Travis McGee, Pynchon, and William Gibson. All told through a singular voice that was erudite and entertaining.

Sad to say this third book didn’t click for me. The voice is still there but the story is a plodding origin tale. The other books were heavy on the computer-speak and tech jargon, but still managed to pull this luddite into the story. This one less so. It’s not terrible – like I said, the writing and humour are still there – but I found this a slog to finish. If you are new to the series, start with Red Team Blues then jump into The Bezzle.

Hmm. I have enjoyed some of the author’s other books. This one didn’t quite gel for me perhaps because I hadn’t read the previous series. Thank you to #netgalley and the publisher for an ARC.

We first met Martin Hench in Red Team Blues (2023), although I didn’t stumble across the self-employed forensic accountant until his second outing, The Bezzle (2024). Now, I know what you’re thinking: forensic accounting? Yawn! But somehow Cory Doctorow writes the most absorbing page-turners about just that. It helps that Martin is a likeable character, working for vast sums for part of the year but only on cases he decides are on the side of good. And now we’re going to take a step back to the early formation of Marty’s business model and ‘code of conduct’.

Skip back to 1986 when computers were still so very new and Silicon Valley even newer. Teenage Marty Hench drops out of MIT not because he’s stupid, but because those brand new computers with their assembly code and semi-underground geeks teaching themselves all the new possibilities distract him from … whatever it was his father wanted him to get into 😉

Knowing how the story looks for Marty about half a century later, from the earlier books, there’s a nice sense of serendipity from the way that he takes up accountancy as an ‘also ran’, because of his engineering failures. As a software geek myself, the glimpse into the early world of it all was also tantalising – oh, to have been on that cusp, learning everything from basic principles! The sense of passion and obsession comes across so well, from Marty and his friends, and I almost felt jealous.

But, worry not! You don’t have to be a fellow nerd to enjoy this, because it isn’t long before Martin takes his ‘special set of skills’ into the wider world and gets recruited by the ‘Revered Sirs’ – a priest, a rabbi, and a Mormon bishop (yes, all the jokes!) who are running a computer sales company. Hired to dig up dirt on some rebel women who have formed a breakaway company, Martin’s eyes are opened quickly into just how … unholy…. a business set up can be. Going against such an organisation, though, might bring down a very unrighteous wrath!

Computers and finance – couldn’t have been more ‘me’ in a book, and through the set up I was quite invested in practically wanting to *be* one of these characters – before the dangerous stuff starts, at least! And then… well, this isn’t a thriller – absorbing, intriguing, but not action-paced. As such there felt to be a bit of a ‘soggy middle’ where some of the peril just went very quiet and it all felt a little bit flat, somehow. Not badly so, but perhaps not the kind of pacing I’m used to. It does pick up again, and it has a few gentle twists and turns before the end.

Overall, well worth the read, even if I was slightly more enamoured at the beginning than by the whole. I still love the concept, and Martin Hench as a character, and the series is all really well-written. I hope there are plenty more adventures in forensic accounting!

Oh: and while this is the third in the series, I would suggest they can be read more or less in any order without spoiling anything or losing any background, so dive in wherever you want!

Picks and Shovels is the third in Cory Doctorow’s series of books centred around forensic accountant Martin Hench. While the first book in the series Red Team Blues was set in the near future and the second book The Bezzle was set in the 1990s, Picks and Shovels goes back to the late 1970s and 1980s to give readers the Martin Hench origin story. And in doing so, Doctorow unsurprisingly reveals that the capitalist grifts that he exposed in the previous novels is nothing remotely new.
Much like The Bezzle, Picks and Shovels starts with a lengthy prologue which rehearses some of the themes of the book and sets up the main action in the book. In it, a young Martin Hench travels to MIT to study engineering but quickly finds that he is “a prototypical MIT fuckup”. Hench finds himself besotted with emerging computer technology and drops out of his studies to become a proto-coder. Hench meets Art Hellman and the two find themselves on the bleeding edge of this new technology through which he develops a love for spreadsheets and from there into accounting. After finding themselves being used, the two head for California where they get into deeper trouble, ending up in a war between a corrupt computer company and its former employees.
Picks and Shovels is another deep critique of American capitalism, a system that encourages grifting and rorting and the value of the company over any humanity. In this case, Doctorow doubles down as the computer firm he imagines is run by the representatives of three major religions who operate under the cover of piety. Against them, he pits a group of plucky underdogs, helped by Hench, in a David and Goliath battle that rages across the streets of San Francisco.
Hench continues to be a great central character – observant, incisive but also not beyond self criticism. This book is an origin story in many ways – not only how Hench becomes an accountant in the first place but also why he moved into forensic accounting and developed his code of ethics. Hench is surrounded by a vivid group of side characters including his friend Art who is able to express himself in the hedonistic San Francisco of the 1980s, the three tough women who he helps and his punk coder girlfriend. In doing so he also brings to life the subcultures of 1980s San Francisco that were the breeding grounds for the Silicon Valley domination of technology.
Underlying this is the very contemporary idea of computer firms using their power to lock consumers into their products. Anyone who has try to move between Apple and Android will know that this type of consumer capture is still alive and well and that attempts to squash cheaper competition are still alive and well.
In Picks and Shovels, Doctorow once again manages to take real world ideas, concerns and philosophies and weave them into an engaging tale focussing on those trying to fight the system. And unfortunately there are plenty of Ponzi schemes, grifts and market manipulations for Doctorow to point Martin Hench at. But his gives him the platform for a long running series that can continue to illuminate the world we live in a little more brightly but also entertain.

THE second book in this trilogy was the first book in 2024, so it seems fair to close it with this third and final volume, probably along with the first the best of the three, although I would have been quicker to say that I didn't like the second one so much. Martin's beginnings, which coincide with those of the programming, a little earlier than I did, but almost contemporary, too bad I never got attached to it. Once again Doctorow uses his stories to pit good against evil, this time throwing in religion as well, to make sure he doesn't miss anything.

IL secondo libro di questa trilogia é stato il primo libro del 2024, mi sembra giusto quindi chiuderlo con questo terzo ed ultimo volume, probabimente assieme al primo il migliore dei tre, anche se facevo prima a dire che il secondo non mi é piaciuto tanto. Gli inizi di Martin, che coincidono con quelli della programmazione, un po' prima di me, ma quasi contemporanei, peccato che io non mi ci sia mai affezionata. Ancora una volta Doctorow utilizza le sue storie per contrapporre il bene con il male, stavolta buttandoci dentro anche la religione, per non farsi mancare nulla.

I really enjoyed this, it’s a prequel and is Martin Hench’s origin story. A must read for anyone who is interested in computers, especially in the 70s when the boom is just starting. It’s about how even then, business owners thought that the best way to be successful was by screwing over the customers. It talks about pyramid schemes like Amway, and how profit over people seems to be the American way. I love seeing how trying to be a good person, doesn’t always make you a good person and how it’s never too late for redemption.
Fantastic writing, using the building blocks of truth and history to build a detailed and compelling backdrop for a fascinating story with amazing characters.

Set in 1986 San Francisco, this book offers a thrilling origin story for Martin Hench, the character who will go on to invent the concept of the forensic accountant—someone who tracks money the way a bounty hunter tracks people. Martin, an MIT dropout, is making ends meet with odd jobs in a city on the cusp of a technological revolution. When he’s hired by a Silicon Valley startup called the Three Wise Men to investigate a rival company founded by their ex-employees, Martin quickly realises he’s backing the wrong side.

The rival, Magenta Women’s Enterprise, is a group of brilliant and determined women driven by the dream of making better computers and taking down the predatory practices of their former bosses. Located in the heart of San Francisco’s Mission District, their company pulses with the optimism and innovation of the burgeoning tech boom. But the challenges they face run deeper than they ever imagined, as corporate greed and cutthroat competition threaten not just their company but their lives.

This prequel is a must-read for anyone fascinated by computers, especially those intrigued by the tech boom of the 1970s and 80s. It deftly explores how even at the dawn of the industry, business practices often prioritised profit over people, echoing schemes like Amway and the broader ethos of corporate exploitation.

The book excels in its depiction of moral complexity. Martin is a captivating protagonist whose journey reveals how the line between good intentions and questionable actions can blur. His struggle for redemption adds depth to an already compelling narrative.

The writing is fantastic, with rich historical and cultural details that create an immersive backdrop. The characters are vibrant and engaging, each contributing to a story that is equal parts thrilling and thought-provoking. This is more than just a story about technology—it’s a gripping tale of ambition, betrayal, and the search for integrity in a rapidly changing world. A must-read for fans of historical fiction and tech history alike.

Read more at The Secret Book Review.