While I liked John Scalzi’s first in The Dispatcher series, one is enough for me. It’s an odd concept, and I’m not really into the “gray area” of life and death.
Sometime in the near future, people who are murdered or killed come back to life. So, The Agency was formed to train Dispatchers, people who “dispatch” people to their death so they can turn up at home, naked, in their own bed. It doesn’t work for suicides, people who choose to take their own life. “Someone has to kill you for your to come back”, not death by natural causes, accident, or suicide. Tony Valdez was an early Dispatcher, trained eight years earlier. He’s “Licensed, bonded, insured” and passed a bunch of psychological tests to show he can handle the aftermath of a failed dispatch. But, Tony admits there’s a one in a million chance of a failed dispatch.
He was on call when another Dispatcher, Jimmy Albert, called that he couldn’t be there that day. Chicago police detective Nona Langdon found Tony at the hospital after an operation failed. She’s looking for a missing person, Jimmy, and knows Valdez was once a friend, and substituted for him. Langdon coerces Valdez into helping her.
The Dispatcher is a quick novella involving issues of life and death. Because it’s by John Scalzi, it’s a piece that makes you think about those issues, as well as topics such as “Is there a God?” As I said, interesting, but a little too gray for me. I like my books black and white.
John Scalzi’s website is https://whatever.scalzi.com/
The Dispatcher by John Scalzi. Subterranean Press, 2016. 130p.
FTC Full Disclosure – I bought an online version of this book.
