Picks and Shovels

THE YEAR IS 1986. THE CITY IS SAN FRANCISCO.

Here, Martin Hench will reinvent the forensic accountant for the digital age – what a bounty hunter is to people, he will be to tech 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.

When Martin is hired by a Silicon Valley startup, Fidelity Computing, to investigate a group of disgruntled ex-employees who’ve founded a competitor, he quickly realises he’s on the wrong side. Martin ditches the greasy old guys running Fidelity Computing without a second thought, utterly infatuated with the electric atmosphere of Computing Freedom.

Located in the heart of the Mission, this group of brilliant young women have set out to beat Fidelity Computing at their own game. But they have no idea of the depth of evil they’re seeking to uproot. Or the risks they run.

In this company-eat-company city, Martin and his friends will be lucky to escape with their lives.

In Picks and Shovels, Cory Doctorow captures the thrilling tension of a high-stakes tech world in its formative years, laying bare the perennial conflict between innovation and the dark motives that often accompany it.