Introduction
The Dispatcher by John Scalzi is about Tony Valdez who is a legal professional murderer. In the future, people who are murdered come back to life in the place where they find most comforting. People who commit suicide and have natural deaths stay dead. Murder victims return to life naked but alive. So, murderers can keep people from dying an eternal death. Someone has kidnapped one of Tony’s colleagues, another Dispatcher and Tony must rescue him, or his colleague may be killed and stay dead. Will Tony continue to search for him even though Tony may face his own eternal death?
Summary
The story starts with Tony at the hospital on an assignment covering for his friend Jimmy Albert. Insurance companies demand Dispatchers are present at risky surgeries so if the operation goes wrong the Dispatcher can murder the patient so the patient can live again. This will protect the hospital and the insurance company from wrongful death lawsuits. It is a judgment call for the Dispatcher on whether to do the task. After he completes his assignment, Chicago detective Nona Langdon interviews Tony about Jimmy. Jimmy is missing and Nona thinks Tony can help her find him. Tony knows the right people to ask about what assignments Jimmy was working on. Jimmy was taking less than legal jobs and they wondered if that was why he was kidnapped. Tony uses his contacts without Nona knowledge and it gets him into trouble. Nona and Tony follow their leads to find out what happened to Jimmy.
Recommendation
The Dispatcher is a 130-page novella and is a tight, intriguing story. The mechanism of how murder victims are returned to life is an interesting idea and the ramifications are explored in this story. It’s a future police procedural with a surprising moral. If you don’t pay attention to your loved one’s wishes, you will suffer at your own peril. I want to read the next novella, The Dispatcher 2 when published and learn more about Tony and the role of Dispatchers in this world.
Links
The Dispatcher by John Scalzi is Book #1 of the Dispatcher Series
This is the link to The Dispatcher’s Goodreads page.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33910936-the-dispatcher
John Scalzi read the first chapter in his work in progress, the Dispatcher 2, at the science fiction conference ConFusion in Detroit on January 19, 2019. This is a link to my recap of the conference and John Scalzi’s reading
This is a link to my book review of The Consuming Fire by John Scalzi, Book 1 of the Interdependency Sequence. It is the next most recent book I have read by John Scalzi.