You’d be forgiven for being intimidated by the title of this thriller. Blockchain is the database technology behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and those briefly trendy but controversial NFTs – but you don’t have to understand any of it. Rest assured, this is a techno-thriller in the Jack Ryan tradition. While heroes and villains use modern computer systems to try and gain advantage throughout, this US mystery story is firmly about politics, spies and families in peril, featuring contemporary geopolitical threats and plenty of gunplay.
This is actually a loose sequel to 2021’s The Wilkes Insurrection and shares some of the same characters but in a vastly different setting. You can dive straight in with no homework required. Author Robbie Bach is better known for leading the Xbox video game business during his 22-year career at Microsoft. As well as board-level roles in the tech and food sectors, he’s also a former chair of America’s Bipartisan Policy Center and supports organisations like Habitat for Humanity International. Busy guy! And also one expertly placed to understand the role of technology in politics and economics.
Tamika Smith, the US Air Force major who stars in the 2021 novel, is now a senator. She’s working with a cross-party group called the Lincoln Coalition, with a critical vote coming up about US national debt, when she becomes the target of a sinister cabal working to destabilise the Senate. Her boyfriend is kidnapped and his daughter wounded during a school shooting. As Tamika works with the authorities to protect her new family, she’ll try to uncover how blackmail threats, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, and a Russian assassin are all connected. Is somebody trying to change the global order from behind a computer screen? Or is this just about money?
A global chase is on, with the story told from multiple viewpoints, following FBI agents, vigilante hackers, and the villains themselves, conspirators using modern blockchain platforms to hide their chain of command. Set in 2023, it’s grounded in references to real-world events, including the 6 January insurrection in Washington, DC, social media toxicity, the war in Ukraine, and the fallout from the COVID pandemic, giving it a straight-from-the-headlines urgency. The political tensions between liberals, conservatives and libertarian accelerationists in America are nimbly demonstrated, and nods to Russian meddling not only feel relevant to our current discourse, but also give the novel the air of a Cold War spy tale too – fans of John le Carré might be delighted.
The use of multiple settings from California to Amsterdam keeps the momentum going even as it’s handling specialised exposition, doing an acceptable job explaining NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and DAOs (decentralised autonomous organisations) to lay readers. The author uses a lot of interior monologue, but switching between characters never gets confusing thanks to distinctive voices and short, well-structured chapters.
Technology is handled ambiguously throughout, treated both as a tool for protection, through guardian angel nerd Bryce, and corruption and control. It adds a very 2025 spin to a Jack Ryan-style analyst-forced-to-take-action setup. The author clearly knows his buzzwords, although it’s odd that he lets his villains use Discord – an unencrypted forum platform mostly used by gamers – to share their plans. Why not Signal or Telegram, where most real blockchain communities seem to be? One of the conspirators considers DAOs to be tantamount to a criminal organisation, but that’s not true in real life: they’re just a modern form of democratic board membership, and DAOs have been set up to administrate charities.
It’s a shame that there’s some leadenness in the storytelling, with dialogue often relying heavily on info dumps from characters, in the form of people stating what’s happening out loud to themselves, or simply reciting facts about a country. And there’s some emotional flatness around the bigger events – at least three murders happen with very little fanfare, the emotional impact of a sexual assault is never fully discussed, and people return to their daily routines shortly after a terrifying shooting with seemingly little distress. There’s a lot of familial guilt, but it doesn’t quite land, and it’s easy to become engaged by the ideas rather than the people.
Yet it remains a compelling read, and crescendos to a final twist – one that still feels satisfying even though it’s hard not to see it coming. Tamika is a complex, powerful character: rape survivor, decorated veteran, stepmother, politician. She’s eager to take the fight to the enemy, and that’s what we need from the figure at the heart of a thriller. The Blockchain Syndicate is an ambitious, neatly-plotted narrative with strong characters and an infectious pace. It will suit readers who enjoy cloak-and-dagger crime on the world stage, and fancy something topical with brains and drive.
Greenleaf Book Group
Print/Kindle/iBook
£19.67
CFL Rating: 4 Stars
