I really enjoyed this book. I hope he does more with this storyline. It is also great being read by Quinto. It was like Sylar reading it to you. What an interesting premise of a story. I was sad to have it end.

From master storyteller and Hugo Award-winner John Scalzi comes this Audible Original novella, winner of the 2017 Audie Award for Best Original Work. Emmy-nominated actor Zachary Quinto—best known for his roles as the Nimoy-approved Spock in the Star Trek reboot and the menacing, power-stealing serial killer Sylar in Heroes—brings his well-earned sci-fi credentials and simmering intensity to this genre-bending thriller.

One day, not long from now, it becomes almost impossible to murder anyone—999 times out of a thousand, anyone who is intentionally killed comes back. How? We don't know. But it changes everything: war, crime, daily life.

Enter Tony Valdez, professional Dispatcher. True to their name, these licensed assassins are tasked with humanely disposing of people in death’s crosshairs to offer them a second chance at avoiding the reaper. When a friend and fellow Dispatcher goes missing, Valdez is plunged into a web of intrigue both professional and personal.

It's a race against time for Valdez to find his friend before it's too late...before not even a Dispatcher can save him. ( )

A fun and quick read - and not much more than that. The idea itself is very interesting, but there is not a lot to be done with it in ca 130 pages of what is essentially a simple whodunit. ( )

I really enjoy speculative fiction when it is merged with other genres. I especially enjoy sci-fi, near future crime/detective stories. I really enjoyed Scalzi's take on near future crime/detective stories in the Lock In series so I thought I would try out The Dispatcher which seemed to have similar vibes. The Dispatcher is an odd work from Scalzi. First off, it was written primarily to be an audiobook (and therefore reads more as a transcription of a radio play). And it's strange because Scalzi's walking around in a sub-genre that's not his usual neighborhood. He does space opera, mostly. Military spec-fic. He also deals with the near-future. But The Dispatcher is, sort of urban fantasy. Sort of. It is still near future sci-fi but set in the most urban of settings: Chicago (which many scifi/fantasy relate to The Dresden Files - another series that mashes up speculative fiction with the mystery genre). The Dispatcher has all the outward characteristics (rain, crisp dialog, a missing person, cop-and-consultant dialectics) of a gumshoe detective story but with that near future twist - that "Dispatchers" exist.

The Dispatcher in book form exists as a novella and tells the story of a dispatcher named Tony Valdez, who in near future Chicago, is a licensed professional whose job it is to humanely (?) dispatch (kill, retire, reboot?) individuals in the cross-hairs of death, so they can have a second chance to avoid death. He just has to dispatch them and they (pop!) disappear from their scene of death and arrive naked in their homes after the moment of their death. There is always that one that doesn't, though. However, enter in the shady and the not-so-shady people who take advantage of this little universal loophole. Dangerous operations in hospitals can be reset for a couple of hours. Horrible accidents on the street can be erased, assuming that the person gets murdered in time. And bloodsports victims can survive beatings.

There's always consequences, of course, and Tony soon realizes that some people are ready to do almost anything to avenge what they see as wrong.

This had a great twist ending and was written in overly accessible prose that read as if it was made for an audiobook (surprise!). Scalzi's writing is always accessible but here more so but don't let that distract you. It's a quick, fast-paced novella for speculative fiction fans, and fans of mysteries and thrillers. ( )

Very light-weight novella doing Scalzi at his peak: genre-blending noir and scifi with snappy dialogue and easy reading. It's designed to be an audiobook, and probably better in that medium, but I'm busy and this is a 30 minute read v. 3 hour audiobook? ( )

A relisten from Mom's Audible account before closing. Murdered people are instantly resurrected back in their beds, creating new careers for professional dispatchers, who insurance companies use as safeguards against failed operations. But dispatchers can have some shady jobs on the side. And might there be a way to murder someone after all? ( )