Audiobook Review: Murder by Other Means by John Scalzi (The Dispatcher #2)
Murder by Other Means
Series: The Dispatcher #2
Author: John Scalzi
Narrator: Zachary Quinto
Published: September 20, 2020
Audiobook 3 hours 33 minutes
Reviewed By: Jessica
Dates Listened To: October 12-13, 2022
Jessica’s Rating: 4 stars
Book Description:
In the world of the Dispatchers, a natural or accidental death is an endpoint; a murder pushes the do-over button and 99.99% of the time the victim comes back to life. Tony Valdez is a Dispatcher who’s been taking shadier and shadier gigs in financial tough times, and after witnessing a crime gone wrong, he finds people around him permanently dying in a way that implicates him. He has to solve the mystery of these deaths to save the lives of others–and keep himself out of trouble with the law.
Jessica’s Review:
This novella should follow your reading of The Dispatcher and then continue on. This world is such a strange world where if you are murdered, there is a 99.9% chance that you will come back to life. We still don’t know why this started or the cause, and I don’t think we will ever know. This world has just come to accept this and move on in a new way, the good and the bad.
We have Tony Valdez back and you just can’t help but like him. And he gets in way over his head when he witnesses a bank robbery gone wrong: One of the bank robbers doesn’t come back to life.
This story is definitely of the noir category and a quick read/listen and Quinto is just brilliant and makes the story enjoyable! This is not a world I would like to find myself in, or even find myself in the job of a Dispatcher: There are so many issues with this type of job of being a Dispatcher along with morality issues and the law in general. And just the temptation of becoming ‘dirty’ for money. I hope Scalzi brings us more of Tony and his misadventures of life as a Dispatcher!