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In recent years I've been wary of reading Cory Doctorow's novels, as his young male protagonists get on my nerves. I enjoy the technological themes he explores, though, and was convinced to read Red Team Blues by his description of it at . It really helped that the male protagonist is older this time, indeed retired. Marty Hench is a forensic accountant who has done well from the rise of Silicon Valley. He gets pulled in for One Last Job (classic trope for a reason) by an old friend who also happens to be a billionaire. I definitely preferred Marty to Doctorow's younger protagonist novels, although it was a bit irritating that all the hot ladies wanted to sleep with him.

What made Red Team Blues well worth reading, though, was the involving plot, solid examination of cryptocurrency, and, above all, thoughtful consideration of the morality of wealth. This is not a theme that fiction ostensibly about technology tends to deal with. I appreciated how Doctorow showed extremes of wealth and poverty from Marty's perspective. These include his billionaire pal (who is briefly and astoundingly stingy about paying him), people whose job is to protect the ultra-wealthy from being taxed, and street sleepers of San Francisco. A conventional thriller plot would have ended once One Last Job finishes and I found it much more interesting that Doctorow works through the lasting ramifications, for Marty and others.

(view spoiler)[This final job earns Marty $250 million and he doesn't know how to spend it, which begs the questions: what is the point of extreme wealth? Once you've bought pricy food and booze, a night at a fancy hotel, and a couple of shiny presents, what more can you possibly want? When terrible poverty and suffering are all around, how can you justify hoarding money for no purpose? I found Marty most interesting when he was wrestling with these questions. You certainly can't buy immortality, as the billionaire pal's sudden death aptly illustrates. (hide spoiler)] I think I still prefer Cory Doctorow's nonfiction writing on pluralistic.net, but this was a fun novel with interesting things to say about wealth inequality under the surveillance capitalism.