Overview
A fresh take on the detective novel that will still appeal to hardcore fans of the genre, Body Broker presents a flawed PI trying to get by in the modern world
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.Reviews
"In Body Broker, we meet Jack Dixon, the literary world's newest wise-cracking, swashbuckling, bad decision-making P.I. All his follies and scrapes and bruises and bizarre enemies are bad news for him, but make for exciting reading for us. Don't miss this one." —Rion Amilcar Scott, author of The World Doesn't Require You
"Body Broker is lean and wiry in its prose as well as how the book reflects its primary character… Jack Dixon brings to mind the almost quiet suffering of [John le Carre's] George Smiley." —Costa Koutsoutis, The Means at Hand
"The story moves along at a good pace with well-defined characters, in particular Jack… [who] will resonate with fans of John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee. Readers will look forward to Jack's further exploits." —Publishers Weekly
"In a genre filled with trigger-happy private eyes, Jack's talk first, throw some punches, and shoot never mentality is refreshing... his personality and the relationships he shares with the other characters are well-defined and complex enough to keep readers invested and itching to know where the series will go next." —"Live by the Shelf" blog
"we here at BP love a good PI tale — especially if it's from a great indie press like the Santa Fe Writers Project and hits the sweet spot by upgrading the genre without undermining it. Yes, you have the classic antisocial PI living on his boat and surviving on a blend of booze and almond butter. Wait, almond butter? That's right. This hardboiled wreck of a man dislikes cars, pays his trainer/makeshift MD by promising to make her and her girlfriend beef Wellington, and doesn't carry a gun. PI Jack Dixon's unique blend of the new age, angry and the caring-despite-himself is what drives this fun tale of a missing private school teen, Nordic bikers, and double-crossing dames." — Broken Pencil Author Biography
Daniel M. Ford was born and raised near Baltimore, Maryland. He holds an MA in Irish Literature from Boston College and an MFA in Creative Writing, concentrating in Poetry, from George Mason University. As a poet, his work has appeared most recently in Soundings Review, as well as Phoebe, Floorboard Review, The Cossack, and Vending Machine Press. He teaches English at a college prep high school in the northeastern corner of Maryland. Find him on Twitter @soundingline.