A review by lewzor
The Body Scout by Lincoln Michel

4.0

Lincoln Michel doesn’t reinvent the noir novel so much as reskin it like one of the characters in The Body Scout. Michel leans hard into noir tropes with a heavy dose of sci-fi body horror and capitalist criticism, all of which blend together nicely thanks to his self-assured storytelling and excellent world-building skills. At times the satirical elements of the story fall flat, inducing eye rolls instead of the laughs I think Michel was aiming for, and I’m not sure the novel does anything wildly new, but what it does, it does well. The novel slick and atmospheric, glossy and gross, and the whole story is tinged with an uneasy wrongness that adds an extra element of thrill to the reads. Points to Michel for framing the narrative around America’s pastime to drive home the irony of it all.