Not long ago I attended an author reading at which Cory Doctorow was promoting his new novel The Bezzle. It features Martin Hench, a forensic accountant with the acumen to uncover the money trails of super-rich criminals. He functions as an unusual type of private detective, recovering funds for various wealthy individuals and organizations and in return receiving a hefty percentage of the take as his reward. The Bezzle is a sequel to Red Team Blues in that Red Team Blues was published first; however, Red Team Blues is a sequel to The Bezzle in that the events in The Bezzle begin in 2006, when Hench is actively pursuing his unique freelance work, but Red Team Blues takes place in modern times, when Hench, now sixty-seven years old, is ostensibly retired and wandering California in a bus-sized RV that formerly belonged to a rock star.

Like The Bezzle, Red Team Blues is told in first person by Hench himself. He has an engaging, intelligent, dynamic voice, much like Doctorow. It’s hard to escape the feeling that the Martin Hench series is a wish fulfillment for Doctorow: if he were not a fulltime writer this is what he might be doing. Also like The Bezzle, Red Team Blues is not exactly science fiction because it does not speculate about anything that is not already happening, but it has the feeling of science fiction because it deals with cutting edge technology with which most of us are unfamiliar.

As I read, I was struck by how much Martin Hench reminded me of an elderly James Bond. He helps out an old tech friend, rescuing him from a theft that might have cost billions or even trillions of dollars. He is paid hundreds of millions for his services, and thereafter, as he eludes the criminals who want to torture and kill him, he has unlimited financial resources. So like Bond, he has cool vehicles at his disposal, he can check into the fanciest hotels and eat at the fanciest restaurants, and you get the impression that he is never really in any danger, even after he has discovered the bodies of a group of young people who have been cruelly tortured and murdered for the information that he possesses. Despite his age, he seems to have limitless strength and energy and can go all day and into the night without undue weariness. I’m seventy-one and in very good health for my age; I can tell you from experience that someone who is sixty-seven is not in his prime. At the least he would have to pace himself. Oh, and one other thing: through the course of the story he meets several wealthy, elegant, attractive women, all of whom are at least a decade younger than him; all of them are infatuated with him and he easily seduces them – or they seduce him. I share these observations not to put you off, but to explain that the novel, while blatantly unrealistic, is nevertheless highly entertaining – just as James Bond films are, if you go for those sorts of things.

One thing that I greatly enjoyed was Hench’s wandering lifestyle. He is a fulltime van dweller, and he often parks his RV overnight at Walmart parking lots, at least until he comes into his sizeable fortune and begins booking remote private campgrounds. (Walmart is renowned for allowing van dwellers to use their lots and public bathrooms.) I also liked the part in which, to avoid high-tech scrutiny, Hench is forced to go underground for days by joining the homeless on the San Francisco streets. He shuts down his electronics, pulls his meager belongings around in a “bundle buggy,” and sleeps in abandoned buildings or outside in empty lots.

All in all, Red Team Blues is an extraordinary book, Martin Hench is an engaging if unlikely hero, and Cory Doctorow is one of my new favorite authors.

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