When Max Trader wakes up in the body of Johnny Devlin, a man he has never met, he can not believe that his comfortable life has been usurped by a loser who is just about to get evicted for non-payment of rent. But Max lives in Newford where the threshold of the world of spirits that most people only visit in their dreams is easily breached, and the street people are closer to the liminal zone than most, so when he finds himself living in a park with a stray dog, his new friends and the real Johnny's not so friendly acquaintances help him come to terms with what has happened and decide what to do about it.
Max Trader is a master craftsman, a successful and well-respected luthier, it is not the creative side of his life that left him vulnerable to the body swap, but his social isolation and lack of connection with other people. The charming but feckless Johnny Devlin just went to bed wishing that his problems would all go away, and once he had Max's comfortable apartment and his bank accounts, he didn't want to let them go.
I thought that this book was a bit too long and could have done with having a few less characters; if the author had thought up a different way for Nia to meet up with the real Max, he could have dispensed with Nia's mother Lisa and her relationship with Julie altogether. I found them the least convincing characters, and leaving out their story would probably have knocked 50 or so pages off the length.