In a world were you can get limbs and organs replaced as easily as car parts, Kobo is addicted to his own transformation. Or he was, until his funds dried up. Now this one-time baseball star spends his days scouting talent, and avoiding a pair of inanely vindictive, but motivated, debt collectors.
In a cyber punk New York, sports teams represent corporations, not cities, and Kobo’s adopted brother, JJ, is the star of the Monsato Mets, a bioengineering conglomerate. The brothers have drifted apart, but Kobo still watches all the Mets matches, and so sees the day a vacant-eyed JJ drops dead on the home plate.
Intent on finding out the truth behind his brother’s death, Kobo’s investigation takes him into unlikely company, and uncovers some uncomfortable truths about his idolised big brother, and the dark machinations of the companies they both work for.
“Venom was quick, capitalism killed you nice and slow. Then sent you a bill.” The Body Scout
Picked for Esquire’s Top 50 Sci-Fi Books of All Time, and winner of the New York Times Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Novel of 2021, this is solid tech noir. The sci-fi elements are fun—neanderthal bodyguards, dinosaur hamburgers, living organ artworks—and the story slaloms along in satisfying hardboiled fashion. I found myself occasionally slowed down by the amount of background, but in general the pacing is good and it definitely kept me entertained to the very end.
If you’re a fan of baseball, detective fiction and/or sci-fi, you’ll probably get a huge kick out of The Body Scout, and if you’re in the market for a genre-bending page turner, this is an excellent choice.
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Paperback from Abe Books £11.16
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