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Picks and Shovels book cover
Picks and Shovels
2025
First Published
4.27
Average Rating
400
Number of Pages

Part of Series

New York Times bestselling author Cory Doctorow returns to the world of Red Team Blues to bring us the origin story of Martin Hench and the most powerful new tool for crime ever the personal computer. The year is 1986. The city is San Francisco. Here, Martin Hench will invent the forensic accountant—what a bounty hunter is to people, he is to money—but for now he's an MIT dropout odd-jobbing his way around a city still reeling from the invention of a revolutionary new technology that will change everything about crime forever, one we now take completely for granted. When Marty finds himself hired by Silicon Valley PC startup the Three Wise Men to investigate a group of disgruntled ex-employees who've founded a competitor startup, he quickly realizes he's on the wrong side. Marty ditches the greasy old guys running Three Wise Men without a second thought, utterly infatuated with the electric atmosphere of Magenta Women's Enterprise. Located in the heart of the Mission, this group of brilliant young women found themselves exhausted by the predatory business practices of Three Wise Men and set out to beat them at their own game, making better computers and driving Three Wise Men out of business. But this optimistic startup, fueled by young love and California-style burritos, has no idea the depth of the evil they're seeking to unroot or the risks they run. In this company-eat-company city, Martin and his friends will be lucky to escape with their lives. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Avg Rating
4.27
Number of Ratings
686
5 STARS
45%
4 STARS
41%
3 STARS
12%
2 STARS
2%
1 STARS
0%
goodreads

Author

Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow
Author · 60 books

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger—the co-editor of Boing Boing and the author of the YA graphic novel In Real Life, the nonfiction business book Information Doesn’t Want To Be Free, and young adult novels like Homeland, Pirate Cinema, and Little Brother and novels for adults like Rapture Of The Nerds and Makers. He is a Fellow for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Los Angeles.

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