Body Broker

By: Daniel Ford

Narrated by: Angelo Di Loreto

When a teenager disappears from an elite boarding school, local police throw the seemingly innocuous case to their neighborhood PI. Enter Jack Dixon: college dropout, ex-cop, and ex-cook. What should be a simple case quickly turns sour, pushing Jack into the path of Nordic biker cultists and vicious drug dealers.

But the houseboat-dwelling PI is determined to find the truth - and the missing kid - even though his persistence leads him into a thorny tangle of drugs and violence that could rip his sleepy waterfront life apart.

©2019 Dan Ford (P)2020 Recorded Books

Engaging, hard to put down

I've been a fan of Ford's work since I discovered the Paladin trilogy, and couldn't wait to see what he does with the crime genre.
I was not disappointed! The main character is very relatable, and doesn't fall into all the crime-hero traps. In a way this feels more like a Scandinavian crime novel than an American one, and that's a huge compliment.

The book is relatively short compared to Ford's previous work, but - just like the Paladin trilogy - it feels exactly as long as it has to be to tell the story. Not a word wasted, not a word too many.

Brilliant first crime novel, with a fantastic narrator who really completes the reading/listening experience.

Okay detective novel, could do without the new age preaching.

The overall story was okay but the main protagonist is not very likable as the author uses him to preach his self righteous new age progressive ideology. He’s an anti gun detective. Not a problem, but it really gets old when you beet the reader over the head with it time and time again. His weird weight control eating habits are really annoying, especially when contradicted with his drinking. Then we have his distain for cars. Add to it his contempt and judgement of people different from him contradicted by the author trying to wright as if all the good guys are inclusive. It’s like the author decided he was going to be clever and make the anti stereotypical detective novel. Fail. Now I know why it was on sale from Audible.

The narration however was excellent.

Unbelievable Characters

None of the villains, the police, the detective agency or the plot feel plausible. They're all written like someone who grew up on propaganda, television shows and high school. Maybe I'm spoiled by having listened to dozens of books by Lawrence Block who writes every character with love, like they're real people, but Body Broker is completely lacking in real people, real reactions, real anything.

The narration was pretty good, so instead of stopping the book out of sheer frustration an hour in I skipped the last hour of the book. This book could have been better written by an AI, and for all I know it could have been. I'm sad for time and money wasted on this book. I've purchased and listened to thousands of audiobooks over the years (I average almost one a day give or take for countless years because I'm blind), and this is in the top twenty worst books.