Every short description I come up with for this book sounds horrible, so that will have to be: The book follows Marty Hench, a 67-year-old forensic accountant. Add to that that it barely qualifies as SF, taking place ever so slightly in the future from when it was written, and not dealing with any technologies that don’t actually exist. All that being said, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It’s kind of a technological thriller. The characters in it, even the minor ones, all seem very three dimensional, and even though some of them are very bad, overall it’s full of compassion and integrity. One thing that feels worthy of mention: Doctorow takes the time at the end to sew up all the loose ends and give all the significant characters a visit, unlike so many books I’ve read recently that end somewhat abruptly with unanswered questions. Big thumbs up.
I may have made the mistake of listening to Picks and Shovels first, planning on doing Red Team Blues soon ™️. I didn’t realize he published them out of order until after I was like half way through, lol.
Huh, I hadn’t even gotten to looking at the sequels (prequels?) yet. I see that the three books are reverse chronological, as far as the action at least. I wonder if there’s badness in reading them in story chronology instead of publishing chronology.