The Dispatcher

How would the world change if murder was no longer fatal? If victims just reappeared at home after the fact, no worse for wear? Well, for Tony Valdez, it means a job as a dispatcher: someone who gives those in fatal accidents or ill health a second chance by killing them. It’s a poorly understood job, one that can cause problems and misunderstandings. When one of Tony’s colleagues goes missing, he’s recruited by police to help find him…only to discover that murder has made way for new horrors.

The Dispatcher does something truly baffling by making murder a help rather than a hindrance. Now, that’s a brilliant conceit in its own right, but Scalzi takes it one step further by imagining all the ways that could spiral outward and change how professionals, doctors, criminals, and others would tackle death.

This book goes quick — all too quick — and lingers in the reader’s mind well after. To make a moral question the centerpiece of a mystery is a surefire way to breed obsession, and The Dispatcher feels like the start of something rather than the end. I hope there’s more to come.