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Red Team Blues
240 pages
A sun-drenched, tech-savvy noir where forensic accounting becomes a high-stakes extreme sport.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like sitting in a luxury touring bus with a brilliant, world-weary hacker who is explaining exactly how the modern world is rigged. It is a brisk, sun-drenched California noir that trades trench coats and fedoras for cryptographic keys and offshore shell companies. The narrative voice is incredibly distinct, wry, highly opinionated, and deeply knowledgeable about the hidden financial and technological architectures that run Silicon Valley. While the stakes escalate into genuine danger, the core pleasure lies in the hyper-competence of its aging protagonist as he methodically unravels complex digital knots. It is a cerebral, deeply satisfying thriller perfect for readers who love their action grounded in authentic, cutting-edge tech and sharp social critique.
- Mood
- sun-drenched noir
- cerebral
- high-stakes
- gritty
- Tone
- wry
- opinionated
- cynical
- conversational
- geeky
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- the illusion of digital security · aging and competence · moral rot of extreme wealth · technological disillusionment · the hidden architecture of power
- The writing
- Sharp, conversational, and heavily laced with accessible but authentic technological and financial jargon.
- The arc
- Moves from comfortable, world-weary confidence into high-stakes paranoia before resolving in hard-won, cynical satisfaction.
- Who it's for
- Tech-savvy readers and thriller fans who love hyper-competent protagonists unraveling complex, real-world systems.
Content notes
- violence
- kidnapping
- gun violence
- financial ruin
About the book
Martin Hench is 67 years old, single, and successful in a career stretching back to the beginnings of Silicon Valley. He lives and roams California in a very comfortable fully-furnished touring bus, The Unsalted Hash, that he bought years ago from a fading rock star. He knows his way around good food and fine drink. He likes intelligent women, and they like him back often enough.
Martin is a—contain your excitement—self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerilla war between people who want to hide money, and people who want to find it. He knows computer hardware and software alike, including the ins and outs of high-end databases and the kinds of spreadsheets that are designed to conceal rather than reveal. He’s as comfortable with social media as people a quarter his age, and he’s a world-level expert on the kind of international money-laundering and shell-company chicanery used by Fortune 500 companies, mid-divorce billionaires, and international drug gangs alike. He also knows the Valley like the back of his hand, all the secret histories of charismatic company founders and Sand Hill Road VCs. Because he was there at all the beginnings. He’s not famous, except to the people who matter. He’s made some pretty powerful people happy in his time, and he’s been paid pretty well. It’s been a good life.
Now he’s been roped into a job that’s more dangerous than anything he’s ever agreed to before—and it will take every ounce of his skill to get out alive.
Description from Open Library.
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