The Dispatcher: Murder by Other Means
A novella. Dust jacket illustration by Michael Koelsch.
From Hugo-winning author John Scalzi comes an exciting sequel to The New York Times best-selling hit The Dispatcher.
The Dispatcher: Murder by Other Means clocks in at 37,000 words, far longer than the tale that kicked off the series.
Welcome to the new world, in which murder is all but a thing of the past. When someone kills you, 999 times out of 1,000, you instantly come back to life. In this world, there are dispatchers — licensed killers who step in when you’re at risk of a natural or unintentional death. They kill you — so you can live.
Tony Valdez is used to working his job as a dispatcher within the rules of the law and the state. But times are tough, and more and more Tony finds himself riding the line between what’s legal and what will pay his bills. After one of these shady gigs, and after being a witness to a crime gone horribly wrong, Tony discovers that people around him are dying, for reasons that make no sense... and which just may implicate him.
Tony is running out of time: to solve the mystery of these deaths, to keep others from dying, and to keep himself from being a victim of what looks like murder, by other means.
John Scalzi
John Michael Scalzi II (born 1969) is an American science fiction author and online writer, and former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He is best known for his Old Man's War series, three novels of which have been nominated for the Hugo Award, and for his blog Whatever, at which he has written daily on a number of topics since 1998. He won the Hugo Award for Best Fanwriter in 2008 based predominantly on that blog, which he has also used for several prominent charity drives. His novel Redshirts won the 2013 Hugo Award for Best Novel. He has written non-fiction books and columns on diverse topics such as finance, video games, films, astronomy, and writing, and served as a creative consultant for the TV series Stargate Universe.
The Dispatcher
The Dispatcher consists of three books. The current recommended reading order for the series is provided below.