The Dispatcher
By Ryan David Jahn
Penguin December 2011
Penguin December 2011
351 pages
This is a terrible book to read if you have just moved and
find yourself still surrounded by boxes. Those boxes will not get unpacked. It
is also a horrible book to read if you’ve just moved into a new house and you
are not yet acclimated to all of the creaks and groans that an old house makes
at night. But the reason it is such a terrible read in those circumstances is
because The Dispatcher is an
incredibly gripping thriller.
Ian Hunt is the police dispatcher in a small Texas town. He
is just finishing up his shift when the phone rings. A young woman cries out
for help. When he asks for her name, she replies that she is Maggie Hunt. Maggie
is Ian’s daughter. She has been missing for seven years. The call is quickly
cut off – her kidnapper has discovered her escape and caught up with her. Ian sets
out to find his daughter and take revenge on the one who stole his daughter.
Author Ryan David Jahn chooses to take us within the mind of
each of the main characters. We switch between Ian’s grief and determination,
Maggie’s fear and desperation, and the warped reasoning of the kidnapper. I
found it fascinating that the reader knows from the beginning where Maggie is
and the identity of the kidnapper. This doesn’t diminish the tension, though.
Jahn makes it clear early on that no one is safe in his book.
I enjoyed the realism of this novel. ‘Good guys’ can die,
injured people get slowed down by pain, and someone who seems truly evil is
often motivated by something other than cruelty. I’ve seen a few too many
movies where heroes who should have died an hour ago keep moving and villains
are seemingly evil for the pure pleasure of it. In The Dispatcher, we get to know a hero who is both fallible and
mortal and a nemesis who has a twisted sense of morality but a true desire to make
his wife happy.
It was interesting to see how Jahn wrote Maggie. She is a
fourteen year old girl who has been living in a basement for the past seven
years of her life. His descriptions of her inner demons are really fascinating,
but I had some pause with the way he described her. She was always described as
being small in comparison to everyone else. Assuming that she hasn’t been
malnourished (and we get no indication that she has), I think that most girls
have had their major growth spurts by that age. From the descriptions, I sometimes thought for a moment that she was much younger than fourteen. This is a minor complaint,
though.
The Dispatcher is
truly one of those edge of your seat, stay up until 2 a.m. to finish it sort of
books. It is a rather graphic story, though. If you don’t do well with blood
and violence, this is not a book I would recommend to you. Ryan David Jahn is an
author who gives his readers both a compelling plot and realistic characters. I
will definitely visit his writing again.
It seems strange to say you like a book where the good guys can die...but I like that, too. When I know that they are untouchable, I care far less. This way, there's something at stake. That's what I really liked about the Game of Thrones series (although the author takes it way far at times.)
ReplyDeleteGlad you got a respite from packing. You deserve it!
I really felt the tension. It seemed as if the author could actually kill off the dad in this story.
DeleteI really want to read the Game of Thrones books, but I feel like I have to make some time since they are so big!
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