The Dispatcher

3.5 Stars

Like Scalzi's series ‘Lock In', this features a police investigation in a world that has subtly changed from our own. In ‘The Dispatcher', if someone else causes your death you have a 999 times in 1,000 chance to come back, reappearing somewhere you love/feel safe (usually at home in your bed). Our MC is a dispatcher, which is someone who is licenced to purposefully cause death in order to preserve life. For example, you get hit by a truck and you are beyond saving, they'll kill you in order for you to come back with your body restored to pre-truck status.

At the time of the story, dispatchers have been around 8 or 9 years and the phenomenon of returning has been happening for maybe a decade so there's a whole lot of industries taking advantage of dispatchers in different ways. One has gone missing and Tony Valdez (our protag) is convinced to consult with a detective in charge of finding the missing dispatcher.

This isn't a in depth mystery, as there's not enough time for it, but this is a great introductory story for this slightly-altered world that Valdez inhabits. It raises some interesting theological and moral questions along the way that add to the interest. I'd definitely consider a longer novel set in this scenario.

On the audiobook performance, Zachary Quinto has an excellent voice for this sort of work and the performance was great.