The Dispatcher

by Ryan David Jahn

Overview

*Soon to be a six-part Apple TV+ series starring Patrick Brammell of Colin from Accounts*

From the author of the award-winning debut crime novel Good Neighbors—a white-knuckle thriller about the lengths a man will go to for his daughter

The phone rings. It's your daughter. She's been dead for four months.

So begins East Texas police dispatcher Ian Hunt's fight to get his daughter back. The call is cut off by the man who snatched her from her bedroom seven years ago, and a basic description of the kidnapper is all Ian has to go on. What follows is a bullet-strewn cross-country chase from Texas to California along Interstate 10- a wild ride in a 1965 Mustang that passes through the outlaw territory of No Country for Old Men and is shot through with moments of macabre violence that call to mind the novels of Thomas Harris.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143120704
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/27/2011
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Ryan David Jahn grew up in Arizona, Texas, and California. He left school at sixteen to work in a record store and subsequently joined the army. Since 2004 he has worked in television and film. His first novel, Good Neighbors, won the Crime Writers' Association John Creasy (New Blood) Dagger Award. Jahn lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Mary.

What People are Saying About This

Rhian Davies

"Near pitch perfect . . . An adrenaline-pumped storyline and one that will leave you with your lower jaw resting on your chest. I don't believe anyone else is offering Jahn's insight and style of writing today. . . . [His] clipped and economical prose is to the bone. . . . Make sure you allocate sufficient hours to read in one sitting."

Financial Times

"The breathless pace virtually demands a single-sitting read. . . . Over the past few years a new generation of crime writers has come perilously close to recreating the jaded mindset of the classic noir thrillers, but no one has succeeded quite like Jahn. . . . [He] leads the new noir pack with a series of palm-sweating situations that pay homage to the classics of the genre while feeling entirely fresh."

Dylan Jones

"A cross between Richard Ford and James Patterson . . . I guarantee that if you pick this up, then everything else in your life will immediately be pushed to the margins. . . . If you only read one book tomorrow, make it this one."

Sunday Times (London)

"Reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy's tales of vengeance, The Dispatcher is an impressively accomplished performance that never strains for mythic power but nevertheless acquires it."

Daily Mirror

"Talk about page-turning . . . Jahn is the fastest rising star in the ever-competitive crime fiction world."

Charlaine Harris

"A well-written, fast-paced book . . . along the order of Quentin Tarantino and with a long and bloody trail to the end."

Jonathan Santlofer

"The Dispatcher grabs the reader on page one and never lets go. It's a classic yet bracingly contemporary story of kidnapping, violence, and a father's ferocious courage."

From the Publisher

"Violent, vivid, and disturbing, The Dispatcher is a stomach churner. If you want a book that grabs you-almost chokes you-and won't let go, this is it. But it should come with a warning label: Caution, a serious writer at work." -Ridley Pearson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killer  Summer

Big Issue

"A nerve-shredding thriller with plenty of energy and a tight plot."

We Love This Book

"Tense, thrilling. Jahn has written a real page-turner, well crafted with convincing characters and an involving plot."

The Guardian

"Reads at a cracking pace [and] is a one-sitting, fist-in-mouth read."

Editorial Reviews

At the start of Jahn’s relentlessly grim vigilante novel, Ian Hunt, a police dispatcher in Bulls Mouth, Tex., receives a phone call from his presumed dead daughter, Maggie, who was kidnapped seven years earlier at age seven by Henry Dean, a twisted and sadistic neighbor who left no clues. The girl has just a little time to speak before she’s cut off. Hunt goes on a determined and merciless quest to find Maggie, starting in Bulls Mouth, a truly benighted hamlet replete with faltering businesses and emotionally damaged citizens. The body count is high, but the suspense is minimal, since Jahn (Good Neighbors) keeps the reader privy to Dean’s actions and plans. The inept, negligent police are usually drunk, and Hunt’s stubborn and inexplicable insistence on not asking for aid in his single-minded pursuit of his daughter and her captor defies logic. Those with an appetite for unrelieved violence and gore will be most satisfied. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"Violent, vivid, and disturbing, The Dispatcher is a stomach churner. If you want a book that grabs you-almost chokes you-and won't let go, this is it. But it should come with a warning label: Caution, a serious writer at work." -Ridley Pearson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killer  Summer

"The Dispatcher grabs the reader on page one and never lets go. It's a classic yet bracingly contemporary story of kidnapping, violence, and a father's ferocious courage." — Jonathan Santlofer, author of Anatomy of Fear

"A well-written, fast-paced book . . . along the order of Quentin Tarantino and with a long and bloody trail to the end." — Charlaine Harris, bestselling author of the Sookie Stackhouse series

"Reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy's tales of vengeance, The Dispatcher is an impressively accomplished performance that never strains for mythic power but nevertheless acquires it." — Sunday Times (London)

"The breathless pace virtually demands a single-sitting read. . . . Over the past few years a new generation of crime writers has come perilously close to recreating the jaded mindset of the classic noir thrillers, but no one has succeeded quite like Jahn. . . . [He] leads the new noir pack with a series of palm-sweating situations that pay homage to the classics of the genre while feeling entirely fresh." — Financial Times

"Reads at a cracking pace [and] is a one-sitting, fist-in-mouth read." — The Guardian

"A cross between Richard Ford and James Patterson . . . I guarantee that if you pick this up, then everything else in your life will immediately be pushed to the margins. . . . If you only read one book tomorrow, make it this one." — Dylan Jones, editor of GQ, in The Mail on Sunday

"A nerve-shredding thriller with plenty of energy and a tight plot." — Big Issue

"Tense, thrilling. Jahn has written a real page-turner, well crafted with convincing characters and an involving plot." — We Love This Book

"Near pitch perfect . . . An adrenaline-pumped storyline and one that will leave you with your lower jaw resting on your chest. I don't believe anyone else is offering Jahn's insight and style of writing today. . . . [His] clipped and economical prose is to the bone. . . . Make sure you allocate sufficient hours to read in one sitting." — Rhian Davies, It's a Crime!

"Talk about page-turning . . . Jahn is the fastest rising star in the ever-competitive crime fiction world." — Daily Mirror, Book of the Week

From the Publisher

"Talk about page-turning . . . Jahn is the fastest rising star in the ever-competitive crime fiction world."

Daily Mirror

"Near pitch perfect . . . An adrenaline-pumped storyline and one that will leave you with your lower jaw resting on your chest. I don't believe anyone else is offering Jahn's insight and style of writing today. . . . [His] clipped and economical prose is to the bone. . . . Make sure you allocate sufficient hours to read in one sitting."

Rhian Davies

"Tense, thrilling. Jahn has written a real page-turner, well crafted with convincing characters and an involving plot."

We Love This Book

"A nerve-shredding thriller with plenty of energy and a tight plot."

Big Issue

"A cross between Richard Ford and James Patterson . . . I guarantee that if you pick this up, then everything else in your life will immediately be pushed to the margins. . . . If you only read one book tomorrow, make it this one."

Dylan Jones

"Reads at a cracking pace [and] is a one-sitting, fist-in-mouth read."

The Guardian

"The breathless pace virtually demands a single-sitting read. . . . Over the past few years a new generation of crime writers has come perilously close to recreating the jaded mindset of the classic noir thrillers, but no one has succeeded quite like Jahn. . . . [He] leads the new noir pack with a series of palm-sweating situations that pay homage to the classics of the genre while feeling entirely fresh."

Financial Times

"Reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy's tales of vengeance, The Dispatcher is an impressively accomplished performance that never strains for mythic power but nevertheless acquires it."

Sunday Times (London)

The opening of this dark thriller grabs readers as Ian Hunt, a police dispatcher in Bulls Mouth, TX, gets a call from his dead daughter. Kidnapped when she was seven years old and presumed dead after seven years, Maggie, now 14, briefly escapes her captors and calls her father, sending Ian on a frantic quest to find her. The grotesque couple who snatched Maggie lead him on a chase across the Southwest. Jahn, a screenwriter whose previous novels (e.g., Good Neighbors) are based on well-known true crimes, uses shifting points of view to reveal the thoughts and emotions of characters on both sides of the law. Several graphically described murders, including Ian's own torture of a witness, provide a grim backdrop as he goes to lengths to regain his daughter—and perhaps redeem himself. VERDICT The constant use of the present tense, several unlikely or unexplained incidents, and some banal philosophy hinder what is surely a cinematic tale (No Country for Old Men, anyone?) of desperate acts and desperate people who repulse rather than intrigue us.—Roland Person, formerly with Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale

Library Journal

Seven years after his daughter vanishes from her bedroom, and two months after he's finally agreed to a funeral for her, a Texas police dispatcher gets a phone call that turns his world upside down. Unlike his ex-wife Debbie, Ian Hunt never gave up hope that their daughter, who was only seven when someone sliced the screen in her bedroom window and carried her off, might still be alive. So when a frantic young woman calling herself "Sarah…No, my name is Maggie, Maggie Hunt" phones 911 and says that she's just escaped from the man who's been holding her prisoner, Ian is ready to leap into action. Unfortunately, Henry Dean spots her and snatches her again before she can identify him to her father. But a trick of fate is about to lead Chief Todd Davis, of the Bulls Mouth Police Department, and Tonkawa County Sheriff's Deputy Bill Finch, who just happens to be Debbie's second husband, straight to Dean's door. Not even the bloody showdown that follows can slow down Ian once he's scented his quarry and confirmed that the precious daughter he left in her brother's care while he and Debbie went on a married-folks' date is alive and looking for him. A scene as harrowing as anything in Good Neighbors (2011) offers graphic proof that he'll stop at absolutely nothing to track her down. Bullets and pages fly furiously as Ian pursues Dean, his fragile wife Beatrice and Maggie across the Southwest to Kaiser, Calif., where a final confrontation with Dean and his equally well-armed brother Ron awaits. "This isn't how it was supposed to happen," think Jahn's luckless characters over and over again. Wrong. For fans of action-packed suspense, this is exactly how it's supposed to happen.

Kirkus Reviews