Mash Up, by Joe Klingler (REVIEW) — Shenanigans in Silicon Valley

A huge part of being alive in the twenty-first century involves—for good or ill—the internet.

 Unless you’re a troglodyte or just doing your damnedest to stay “off the grid”, it’s almost impossible to avoid being online at least some portion of most days.

But being virtually connected goes a lot deeper than your daily doomscrolling (or adorable kitten clips, how-to-whatever videos, DoorDash-dining-orders, etc.). 

Because unless you opt out of those optional cookies on every website you visit (news, info, shopping, porn, whatever), your visit will be tracked. 

It seems innocent enough, doesn’t it? If Site A notices that you repeatedly visit to look at sneakers, you’re absolutely going to be deluged by notifications about other sneakers, and when something you’ve looked at previously goes on sale or comes back in stock. 

That can be helpful(ish)... albeit also kinda creepy. 

The bigger problem is that small access into your life can explode into something far more intrusive, when hackers gain access to so much more than your shopping habits.   

Joe Klingler shows how that might look in Mash Up.

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Salmon-out-of-water cop Qigiq has been trying to make the best of his sabbatical, which has him on temporary loan from the tiny, remote Alaskan village he calls home to the vast San Francisco police department, with the goal of becoming more computer savvy during his sojourn.

His stay in the city by the bay has multiple purposes: to get him away from some bad memories (a recent case gone bad, mostly because Qugiq wasn’t fluent in computerese), learning about computer/online crime, and to offer any unique perspectives he, himself might have to his new partner, Detective Kandy Dreeson. (Not that Kandy—whip-smart, capable, and a ballbuster in her own right—probably needs his insight, but one never knows.)

Qigiq’s learning is going about as well as can be expected—in other words, at near-glacial speed—when a new case drops into their laps to provide a little distraction. 

A violin student at an area college has just received an Amazon package that—mysteriously, horrifically—yields only a thumb inside…which, going by the shade of nail polish, looks suspiciously like that of the girl’s roommate, a cellist (who has yet to return from a date with a new mystery man... and who will surely—sorely—miss that thumb).

But, as difficult as trying to track down a missing girl (missing a digit) is, the case manages to get even more complicated, as it leads the detectives down a twisting path of internet shenanigans—with violent YouTube videos depicting torture (and worse?), a rash of iPod scams—including the curious disappearance of thousands of pirated music files on users' devices (and threats of similar disappearances on a global scale), and news of a crazy-bad virus spreading like wildfire through the ‘net. 

It also puts Qigiq and Kandy directly in the sites of a madman. (Cue crazy car and motorcycle chases, clandestine meetings with folks of questionable repute, cross-country hijinks, and threats of blowing up pieces of Silicon Valley.)

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Not gonna lie: a couple of chapters into Mash Up had me feeling antsy. 

Half of the story—the on-loan-from-Alaska detective and his worldly San Francisco counterpart—was immediately intriguing, but the other half—following a small programming team and the members of a board at a high-tech company in Silicon Valley—was tedious. 

Once the two story lines began intermingling, though, the whole became more cohesive, and eventually turned into a compelling, "ripped-from-the-headlines (tomorrow, if not today)” sort of story. 

So, my take on Joe Klingler’s Mash Up? Well worth reading, and if you can stick out the uneven beginning, you'll wind up with an entertaining techno-thriller read.

~GlamKitty

[Updated March 2026]