This was slick but still substantive. I’m obviously going to enjoy a story about a forensic accountant, given my line of work and “follow the money” background. And it fits well with my general political position of believing the financial world is largely a scam built on the suffering of poor people. More than all that, though, it’s a well-paced mystery that has friendship at its core. Without Martin and Scott’s relationship, it would probably get too slick and clever for my liking. Doctorow is my favorite type of writer: an activist who pulls his expertise into fiction nearly effortlessly, allowing for a fun plot and digestible explanations interspersed.

Cory Doctorow does it again! This author is fabulous at interweaving complex topics into a compelling story with deep characters that you can’t help but relate to. Not only did I learn a great deal, but I enjoyed the read.

Doctorow is having the most fun in years with his Martin Hench series, and book two is even better than RED TEAM BLUES. The front cover uses a quote from the Financial Times' review of the first book, calling these books "halfway to Jack Reacher in the world of Sam Bankman-Fried" and while that's an absolutely absurd analogue, Doctorow really does deliver on the airport-thriller model while also completely upending everything about that genre. If somehow you weren't already mad about the prison-industrial complex, this book will make you mad -- because Doctorow is *mad* and it shows. He also does a spectacular job explaining things like margin calls -- which I watched a whole movie about and still didn't quite understand -- in ways that keep the story moving and don't talk down to you (looking at you, THE BIG SHORT). Plus, Martin Hench is a decent guy in a world of utter villains. He's close enough to the hero we need that you can't help but want more.

The Bezzle is everything I want in a Martin Hench novel - a die polemic about life in modern American capitalism, the police state, and the powerlessness of it's victims held together with just enough plot to keep it together. Hench recalls rather scattered memories connected to a friend with whom he visited Catalina Island, a playground for the super-rich where scams are bleeding the locals dry. Hench and his friend try to protect the victims, and end up on the wrong side of the police and the private prison system. The statement "there is no crime on Catalina island" is filled with epic menace akin to "if it prospers, none dare call it treason" and is hauntingly repeated over every monstrous thing done to claim and maintain the island, a section of the book that slices through the obliviousness of the supposed glamour to reveal the horrific core, and the layers and layers of cruelty needed to sustain it. The section on the private prison system is informative and heartbreaking. Like a modern Upton Sinclair, however, Doctorow's characters and plot are merely window dressing, so anyone hoping for complex characters, decent dialogue, and any sense of irony should be warned. Hench's life seems to be purely nerdy rich guy wish fulfillment, though in this novel we are spared details of his dating life. Doctorow's work is as vital as Sinclair's, which means that it is well worth reading for the polemic alone, which digs deeply into the daily, normalized things around us to show the cyberpunk dystopia that is the USA.