This is my fifth Scalzi novel, so at this point, I must be a fan! I will admit, I was nearing the end of the year and still too far away from hitting my Half Cannonball so, on a quiet afternoon, I found myself googling “Short Free Audiobooks” in desperation. I stumbled upon the Dispatcher, saw the author’s name and the runtime (2 hours and 18 minutes), downloaded this audiobook (audionovella?) without hesitation.
Tony Valdez is the titular Dispatcher, a person who is paid to murder people. But it’s not what you think! In this near future speculative fiction, the cosmic scales have somehow been changed. In almost every case, when a person is murdered, they don’t die. Instead, they wake up naked at home in their bed, restored to the condition they were in a couple of hours before their death. It’s not clear why this happens, but commercialism being what it is, the new job of Dispatcher has emerged. We are introduced to Valdez as he enters a surgery. The surgeon is extremely hostile towards him, demanding that he leave; however, he’s there at the insistence of medical insurers. In the course of the surgery, something goes wrong and the patient is about to die. At that right moment, Valdez steps in and ‘dispatches’ him. The patient awoke, at home, in the condition he was in before the doomed surgery began.
We then learn the ‘rules’ of dispatching through Detective Langdon, who is investigating the disappearance of a dispatcher who is known to Valdez.
And this is when this tight little novel lost me.
I understand that a necessary storytelling device is often the naive character who needs the rules explained to them. That’s the purpose Langdon primarily serves throughout this novella. But you cannot tell me that an experienced detective, WHOSE MAIN JOB IS TO INVESTIGATE MURDERS, would not know all the ins-and-outs of dispatching. But she seems to be completely and utterly clueless about this pivotal and incredible miracle that has shifted society. How? How can she not understand? At one point, a character is murdered and wakes up again as expected, and Langdon asks, with genuine curiosity, what it’s like to die. I mean, surely she would have investigated countless murders (or, as they must all be now, attempted murders) at this point. She’s not a wet-behind-the-ears graduate. She’s experienced!
I might seem like I’m nitpicking but this storytelling device continues through the whole story. Langdon learns, seemingly for the first time, about the seedy underground of dispatching and how it’s used in organised crime, fight clubs, etc etc. I found it infuriating.
I understand this is the first in the dispatcher series, and perhaps now that the rules are firmly established, this issue is resolved in later books. But for my experience, it was too frustrating to overlook. A great premise, but a poor delivery. 2 intracranial payloads out of 5.
PS, I’m giving this 2 instead of 1, because Zachary Quinto read this instead of the usual Wil Wheaton that Scalzi uses. That was a welcome change in narrator.