In Brian Cuban’s new thriller, The Body Brokers, we return to the semi-chaotic world of Jason Feldman, a Squirrel Hill native and wannabe mensch, a former drug courier with a suspended law license and a taste for cocaine. In the new book, set about a year after Jason’s debut in The Ambulance Chaser, he’s in recovery, still in Pittsburgh, and on track to regain his license. Then tragedy strikes, and he’s thrust into a dangerous new situation.
Like The Ambulance Chaser, Cuban, a Mt. Lebanon native and University of Pittsburgh Law School graduate, draws on his legal knowledge and his experience as a person in long-term recovery from alcohol, cocaine and bulimia. This time, he’s focusing on the fentanyl epidemic and corrupt rehabilitation centers that pressure patients to agree to admission, while billing for treatment they don’t receive. (One notorious case was the Next Step Foundation in McKees Rocks, which was shut down in 2017 after authorities discovered clients were being sold fentanyl
and heroin.)
In The Body Brokers, Jason finds his girlfriend, Emily, dead from a fentanyl overdose in her South Side apartment. Emily had also been in recovery: she and Jason met at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Jason is heartbroken. Delaney, Emily’s roommate and a physician, is suspicious. The two agree on one thing: Emily kept her past to herself.
Together, Jason and Delaney embark on a quest to unravel the tangled threads of Emily’s backstory. It leads them east, where they track down Doc, a physician stripped of his license for selling drugs, but now running a sober house in Kensington, a Philadelphia neighborhood known for its drug activity. The search for the truth leads them back to Pittsburgh.
The Body Brokers is Cuban’s second work of fiction. He also published The Addicted Lawyer, in which he discussed his struggles with addiction, in 2017.
“I enjoy the process of creativity, getting that one thought, or that one line you’ve heard,” Cuban said. “Out of that comes a character.” He’s already at work on another novel, centered around a character much like Elizabeth Holmes, who was convicted in 2022 of defrauding investors in Theranos, a blood-testing startup she founded.
As with The Ambulance Chaser, Pittsburgh references abound in The Body Brokers. Jason walks around Point State Park. Even in sobriety, he still frequents the Squirrel, modeled after the Squirrel Hill Café aka Squirrel Cage. The Original Oyster House is the scene of a tense meeting with an adversary. (A particularly clever shoutout: Delaney is named after Martin Delany, an African-American abolitionist and physician who published The Mystery, Pittsburgh’s first Black newspaper, in 1843.)
One reference still bothers him, though: due to a proofreading error, Roberto Clemente is mistakenly called Robert.
“It’s mortifying,” Cuban said. “It stabbed me right in the heart.” He added that it will be corrected in the e-book version.
Although he has lived in Dallas for many years, “Pittsburgh is ingrained in my blood,” Cuban said. “I still cheer for the Steelers and mourn for the Pirates.
“We need someone that bleeds black and gold” to buy our beleaguered baseball team, Cuban said. (He reiterated that, despite the fond hope of yinzer sports fans, it’s not going to be his billionaire brother, Mark.)
He hasn’t returned to Mt. Lebanon much since his mom Shirley’s death in 2022, Cuban said, but he visits the city as often as possible. He hopes to come back soon if he’s able to set up a book release event.
“I always get a Primanti’s sandwich. I take a look at Mt. Washington,” Cuban said of his hometown visits. “I marvel at how much things have changed.”