Chump Change

A Leo Waterman Mystery

By: G. M. Ford

Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor

Hearing a dying stranger call you by name would leave anyone full of questions. When it happens to private eye Leo Waterman, the more he learns about the late lottery winner's rags-to-riches-to-ruination life, the more he wants not just answers but justice. That means a road trip to Idaho to find out how a good-hearted young man with millions got skinned - in more ways than one.

It's all downhill from there as Leo gets roped into an ugly battle between elderly ranchers and a ruthless developer who knows how to make a killing. Money can’t buy happiness, but trying to take it from the wrong people could leave Leo a lot worse than miserable.

©2014 G. M. Ford (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved

great story

I really enjoyed this book! kept me captivated from beginning to end...not a dull moment!

leo's evolution

good story line. cool characters. some of Leo's experiences have changed; such as how house has changed.

five stars with exceptions

I’m torn. I don’t want to take away anything from Mr. Lawlor or his humorfull reading of the book. But I do think his voice is miscast for this character. I don’t fault him for that. Whoever chose him is at fault in my mind. His scratchy tenor voice gives a mental picture of a scrawny, freckled redhead. But Leo Waterman tells us repeatedly he is a large heavy man. His voice should probably match. A big, gruff base-baritone fits that description. Anyhow, enough of that. The writing and plotting are good. The characters are varied and well fleshed out. The plot has enough twists and turns to keep it going to the last words. I love this writer and his protagonist and all the other interesting cast that comes with him. Great fun! I certainly recommend this entire series.

A very wild ride!

A bit about the Leo Waterman series: G.M.Ford has been writing novels in this series for more than 20 years. Leo is the son of a very wealthy and famous crook. He has been lazy and useless for much of his life. He inherited a vast fortune, but his dad set up the inheritance so that Leo could not have access to any of the money until age 45. Leo became a private eye working as little as possible until he reached age 45. He arrived at the magic age in the 6th novel in the series. Chump Change is the 8th novel. The series is set mostly in Seattle, but there is some travel to other parts of the US northwest and western Canada.

Chump Change, released in 2014, is filled with humor, action, and suspense. It is also more than a bit unrealistic, but it is a wild and fun ride. So the reader should suspend disbelief and enjoy the ride.

I like this series by G.M. Ford

I like this series by G.M. Ford. Story and character development are good and Leo Waterman's sarcastic attitude to life adds appreciable humour. Narrator Patrick Lawlor as grown on me and now seems to me to be well suited to this series. Lookig forward to the next in the series.

Disappointed

Love everything Leo! Always a fun ride with him and the boys. Idk what happened with this book, the "...said" bug bit Ford bad. My #1 pet peeve! Ford is usually so creative with dialogue, never stuck in that back and forth monotony. I found myself subbing my own words for the "said". Very distracting, then annoying and not up to par for Ford. Otherwise another great romp! Won't ever stop me from reading about Leo, just quite a bit less enjoyable.

Laughably terrible

I’ve read police procedurals, courtroom dramas, PI and covert operator novels by Grisham, Haig, Clancy, Fury, Connelly, Crais, Flynn, Eisler and the rest, so after a while one learns how trained professionals behave in given situations. Apparently Mr. Ford doesn't read them or otherwise know what he’s talking about, so the book is painfully amateurish, unbelievable and riddled with contradictions. This is not a book for a discerning reader; in fact I would say it one of the worst books I’ve read.

The millionaire PI hero Leo, demonstrates his pugnacious character when confronted by a cop who harasses him on the way to his destination. Turns out the bad guys own the destination town too, so after another confrontation, he retires to a hotel room and waits for them to come for him with the lights on and the TV blaring (one doesn’t normally illuminate oneself as the target further adding the distraction and noise of a TV, duh). He has brought along plenty of firepower; a Glock, an assault rifle with heh, a “60 round clip” and a Smith and Wesson snub nose 38. He has set the remote alarm on his car should they tamper with it, which of course they do. When the alarm sounds, he turns off the TV and lights and sneaks outside to the parking lot with his least practical weapon, the .38. Making a silly story short, he finds two perps ransacking his car and yells at them from behind another car to leave. No, he doesn’t call the cops nor does he identify or confront them, he just asks them to leave!

Later, running from pursuers on a dark night, he runs off a ledge he couldn’t see in the dark, landing in a canal with his pursuers close behind. In the canal he discovers and swims inside a large metal culvert. Once inside, he confronts the pursuing attack dog, and later the dog’s owner, and ‘seeing their moves’, is able to fight them, finally killing both. Then he moves further inside and ‘sees’ a bend in the culvert. I trust I needn’t explain the impossibility of all this. There are many more ridiculous vignettes of this nature.
The story lurches from one implausibility to another which was mildly entertaining for a bit, just to see how ridiculous it could get, but finally it was just irritating, I could not finish it.