Review: Levon's Trade, by Dixon

It's gonna be a Statham movie soon

I’m keeping this short because the book is simple and I only sort-of liked it.

LEVON’S TRADE is the 2014 novel from powerhouse writer Chuck Dixon, who has penned a lot of comics I’ve read over the years and I like his work. This is my first time reading one of his novels. The recommendation came via my buddy BookstoreThor (friend of the show) who told me it’s getting an adaptation to film this spring, starting The Stathe Himself in the lead role, under the title A Working Man.

I’m pretty sure this movie got greenlit based on the success of Reacher on Amazon Prime, because the book series is the same kind of thing. Levon Cade is our protagonist—an ex-SF guy from the military who knows how to do all kinds of scary things and kill people a hundred times over. He’s a widower and a single father, stuck in a custody battle with his crappy father-in-law for his nine year-old daughter.

Levon works construction and he’s a hardcore enforcer about company policy. Nobody steals anything or slacks off—if they do, Levon will beat the piss out of them. When the company owner’s daughter gets roofied and trafficked during Spring Break, the owner goes to Levon and offers him An Arseload Of Money (TM) to retrieve her.

Initially Levon claps back with the ol’ “I don’t do that any more” schtick, but then he needs the money to fight the legal battle against his lousy father-in-law, so the rampage begins.

It’s the kind of premise you’ve seen before. I already mentioned Reacher, and it’s a lot like that, with shades of Taken and other similar properties. While this is the start of a series, the first book doesn’t have much of a happy ending, making the ultraviolent grind a somewhat fruitless push.

BookstoreThor suggested (and I think he’s right) that the ending will get changed for the movie, because we Americans love our happy endings, and film treatments don’t land the same as novels. For Chuck Dixon’s sake I hope it does well, I like the dude and I’m glad he’s still getting work. This book was just a rare case of a miss for me, and I’m probably not going to read the rest. Alas.

But if YOU decide to try it out, be aware there’s a lot of rough language and violence in it, because it’s about the Russian mob doing Russian Mob Things.