Title: DEATH’S DRIVER: The Life of a Body Transporter
Author: JACK LARSON
Type of Book: AUDIOBOOK – Unabridged
Narrator: J. SCOTT BENNETT
Length: 1 hour and 49 minutes
Genre: NON-FICTION, MEMOIR
Release Date: December 18, 2015
Publisher: ZA Productions
Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars ****
~ I received a free copy of this book through AudioBookBlast in exchange for an honest review.
PUBLISHER’S SYNOPSIS:
My career in the death care profession spanned a decade but encompassed the industry from several perspectives. What tied all these together was my role as a driver for the dead.
Sometimes I was a funeral driver, other times I picked up from morgues, and in another capacity I picked up the deceased from the scenes of car accidents, shootings, hit and runs, and worse. Finally, I cleaned up after homicides, accidents, and suicides as a side business.
I could have organized it in a logical, linear fashion, but that’s not how I remember it. My experiences varied widely and the pacing of the job was frenetic, fascinating, heartbreaking, and strangely edifying. Like death itself, it was always unpredictable.
MY REVIEW:
This audiobook is just under two hours in length and in it, Jack Larson relates short anecdotes about his time as “Death’s Driver.” Most of his anecdotes are about picking up bodies at accident or crime scenes and at times he goes into gory detail about the condition the body was in when he arrived to transport it to the morgue.
This audiobook is definitely not suitable for listeners under the age of 18 as I believe it would give children nightmares. It may even give some adults nightmares, but at least adults know what to expect when they read the synopsis, so, if it causes them nightmares, that is their own fault.
All of the anecdotes in this audiobook are very short. I found this frustrating at times. I guess I wanted a bit more of the backstory for each anecdote. Without the backstory I never really felt connected to the stories. But, I assume that author Jack Larson had to stay unattached and dispassionate to be able to do his job, so I guess this detachment is to be expected.
I really liked the narrator. He did a great job of describing some horrific situations with just the right mix of reverence for the dead and clinical dispassion. He never allowed his own personal feelings about any of the situations to show in his voice and if you choose to listen to this audiobook, you will realize just how difficult that must have been for him. I rate the narration as 5 out of 5 stars. *****
Overall, I found some of the anecdotes interesting and I found some of them just ridiculous. I just wish there was more personal detail so that I would have felt some connection to the author.
I rate this audiobook as 4 out of 5 stars. ****
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jack Larson is an artist based out of Albuquerque, New Mexico. His work is displayed in private collections around the world.
Several of his paintings have been published as book covers and one has been featured as an “Easter Egg” within Android smartphones. His work has been excoriated in reviews, exorcised by fundamentalist preachers, and appreciated by art collectors since he started painting zombies in 2009.
Click here to visit Jack Larson’s blog.
Follow him at: Instagram @zombiemarketing
Click here to visit his Facebook Page.
ABOUT THE NARRATOR:
Scott was a Minister for twenty years, and also served in the United States Airforce as a Spanish translator before becoming a Middle School English and Language teacher. He is fairly new to the world of audiobook narration since he only began narrating audiobooks in July of 2015. However, in that short length of time he has narrated over 40 audiobooks
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