I’ve been an avid reader of Cory Doctorow’s books for a long time and was thrilled to discover that Picks and Shovels is one of his very best. I enjoyed this novel about pyramid scheme skulduggery, during the early age of personal computers, so much, that I immediately picked up The Bezzle; a book that had languished on my to-be-read pile since it arrived last year.
Both books feature Doctorow’s forensic accountant Martin Hench, a man who will leave no spreadsheet cell unturned to hunt out powerful people who broker shady schemes. Both books are depressingly excellent. It should be impossible for stories about accounting to be so exciting.
What Is Picks and Shovels?
Picks and Shovels is the Marty Hench origin story. The mathematical wunderkind heads off to MIT, where he finds liberation from his tightly-wound father, and discovers the wonder of personal computers. Marty flunks his courses but starts to build PCs from wherever he can find parts. He falls in with another misfit and computer nerd, Art, forming a firm friendship, and then a small company with another (monied) student.
This collaboration goes south, so Marty and Art head west, to California, where the draconian non-compete clause from the failed business cannot be enforced.
Marty quickly finds work, in the most unlikely of places; a computer company run by a Rabbi, a Priest, and a Mormon. The board of Fidelity Computing sounds like the start of the joke, something Marty (and therefore Doctorow) acknowledges, but it’s a fun premise to hang a story on.
Fidelity Computing sells bespoke computer equipment to synagogues, churches, and other faith-based organizations. After working there for a few days Marty realizes that there is something very unusual going on. The products of the company that he works for are garbage.
So much so, that three former Fidelity employees left the company to start their own business. Marty finds he warms far more to the all-female board of Computing Freedom; a company set up to rectify the mistakes its founders brought into being during their time at Fidelity. Marty is so enamored with the project that he jumps ship and starts to work for the other side. Unfortunately, somebody at Fidelity really doesn’t like this and things become violent for Marty and his new friends.
Marty and Computer Freedom continue digging and soon find themselves mired in a swamp of shady dealings. Can they expose what’s going on at Fidelity or will this corrupt company with a beatific face, win out?
Why Read Picks and Shovels?
I don’t know if it’s because the novel was set in an age that I understand and can relate to, (although I’m too young to have direct experience of this era of computing evolution) but I thoroughly enjoyed Picks and Shovels.
There’s a reason origin stories are popular in the superhero world, and that rings true in multiple ways here. It’s the origin of Martin Hench, Computing Freedom, and the whole computing movement. It was fascinating to see the three strands interacting.
On top of that, Doctorow delivers an excellent menacing mafia-type corporation, that deploys dirty tactics and nefarious schemes to make huge profits and get exactly what they want. Doctorow in both his fiction and non-fiction is an expert in peeling back how corporations exploit the system. Pick and Shovels is no exception. This is another story about the tenacity of the plucky small business and the dirty tricks used to keep it down.
The story here is excellent. The characters in the novel are extremely engaging. Doctorow chose to include four strong female computing experts, that make excellent foreground figures against a backdrop of male condescension. Overall, Doctorow has delivered a technical thriller that entertains and educates from first page to last.
A Bonus Bezzle
Buoyed by my enjoyment of Picks and Shovels, I immediately pulled out my copy of The Bezzle. This is set later and is narrated by an aging Martin Hench in the 2020s, telling a story that is meant to have happened in 2006, around the time of the dot-com bubble.
The story opens on Santa Catalina Island, in California, a tourist enclave established by the Wrigley family. Martin is taken there by a friend who has dot-com millions. Here, whilst hobnobbing with the rich and even richer, they uncover a peculiar fast-food pyramid scheme.
After taking the scheme down, Marty and Scott, make an unlikely and powerful enemy. Scott then finds himself behind bars, for crimes he sort of committed and things get even worse.
The second part of the novel flips to an indictment of the Californian penal system. The picture Doctorow portrays is bleak in the extreme. Once again, there are smart powerful men exploiting the powerless, using a system that is very much stacked in the favour of the monied and connected. Martin uncovers a complex accounting construction, aimed and screwing every last penny out of the state of California and the families of the incarcerated, without putting any of it back into the state’s prison system.
The book is a massive indictment of the use of private equity to run public services.
The Bezzle perhaps is not as satisfying a read as Picks and Shovels. It is, nevertheless, another interesting read, especially if you want to learn how money can be hidden, moved, and siphoned off. It’s an excellent encapsulation of Doctorow’s term “enshittification” – Macquarie’s word of the year in 2024.
The themes and issues highlighted by Doctorow’s novels are nothing short of scandalous. It’s easy to see with a tech oligarchy forming behind the new US President, that things could be about to get a whole lot worse. This brings me to one small problem with Cory’s books. They’re too realistic. We want the little guys to win and the embezzlers to pay, but with so many ways of recycling money and hiding your actions, they very rarely do. Doctorow’s novels highlight this. It might be realistic but can leave a bad taste in the mouth when you’ve finished reading.
Both Picks and Shovels and The Bezzle are technical storytelling at its finest. We need more writers like Cory Doctorow, to simplify the complicated and shine a light on the murky world of corporate finances.
If you would like to pick up a copy of Picks and Shovels you can do so here, in the US, and here, in the UK. (Affiliate Links) You can pick up The Bezzle here in the US and here, in the UK.
If you enjoyed this review, check out my other book reviews, here.
I received a copy of this book in order to write this review.
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