The Dispatcher

by Ryan David Jahn

Ian Hunt is the police dispatcher for the small town of Bulls Mouth, East Texas. Just as his shift is ending he gets a call from his fourteen-year-old daughter, Maggie.Maggie, who has just been declared dead, having been snatched from her bedroom seven years ago. Her call ends in a scream.The trail leads to a local couple, but this is just the start of his battle to get his daughter back. What follows is a bullet-strewn cross-country chase along Interstate 10, from Texas to California.The riveting new novel from the acclaimed author of Acts of Violence and Low Life is a brilliantly original, blood drenched thriller, about the lengths a man will go to for his daughter.

Genres: Thriller, Fiction, Mystery, Crime, Audiobook, Suspense, Drama

435 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 2011

About the author

Ryan David Jahn grew up in Arizona, California, and Texas. He finished school at sixteen, worked several odd jobs, from record store clerk to janitor, and spent time in the army before moving to Los Angeles, where he muddled about in television and film for several years.

He published his first novel, Acts of Violence, which went on to win the Crime Writers' Association John Creasey Dagger, in 2009, and has since published four others: Low Life (2010); The Dispatcher (2011), which was long-listed for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger; The Last Tomorrow (2012); and The Gentle Assassin (2014). Translation rights to his works have been sold in twelve languages.

He now lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with his wife Jessica Alt Jahn and two daughters, Francine and Matilda.

Reviews

[Mandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was a thrilling ride... A man who is a dispatcher hears his daughter's voice after she has been presumed dead and from there on the story escalates. This father lets nothing stand in his way to save his little girl. Highly recommended. It's a page turner!

[Lou · Rating 4 out of 5]

Seven years and counting your cherished daughter, has been gone. You buried an empty casket, you need closure, you need to put her body to rest.
It must be unimaginable the grief, memories and the sorrow that you have to deal with on a daily basis. The vengeance and the anger must be an unrelenting force. Still you keep your job answering calls as a dispatcher, calls of others in need, calls of emergencies. Meanwhile your life fragments and disappears slowly before you.
What can our main protagonist do? He's lost his wife to the aftermath of his daughters disappearance. What he doesn't do is give up hope.
Hope that one day a call comes through and at the end of the line news of his daughters discovery comes to light.

She is 14 now and has been treated nothing less than an animal. Kept in a basement chained and feed. A sociopathic couple have her. She hopes one day her cop dad will save her. She has hope.

The villain is killing, he has been since he lost his young child. He's been snatching replacement kids and killing those that don't fit their needs. You really hope that the girl in in this story sees the light of day and one day be in her fathers arms in safety.

One day that saving grace comes, a call comes through its her it's her voce she is alive!
Thoughts and emotions racing through the father he must take action and move fast. He's feeling Vengeance and happiness and by any means necessary she must be found.

What unfold is a story of desperate measures. Someone who was once a law abiding citizen a man of the law and lived by the law is forced to break them and get his daughter back.

The author does well in gluing you to the pages with the ensuing events. It all plays out well in your minds thought imagery, a cinematic explosive search and survival down to a grand finale. You won't be disappointed the story delivers one hell of a feel good payoff. The story was in a simple flowing fashion unfolding with tension and as time runs out it hooks you, a visceral tale with expectations of vengeance and glory.
Review also here.

[Lorraine Southern · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Audible narration for this was very poor, to the extent it put my concentration right off and detracted from the story.

[Shelleyrae at Book'd Out · Rating 4 out of 5]

I saw a review of The Dispatcher in my RSS feed st Jenn's Book Shelves but since it was past the publication date I thought it would no longer be available. To my surprise it was still listed so I decided to request it anyway and to my surprise I was approved a few days later. It was both the premise and Jenn's review that I found intriguing. A small town emergency dispatcher receives a call from a phone box, his daughter, who has been missing for seven years, is begging for his help. With single minded determination, Ian Hunt renews his search for his daughter, willing to do anything to bring her home.

From the first few pages, after Hunt receives the call, I was eager to know what had happened seven years ago and by then introducing Maggie's point of view, the author had me hooked. There is a palpable sense of urgency as Hunt mobilises the police and Maggie is dragged screaming from the phone box, leaving the receiver dangling. Jahn then lets us into the mind of Henry, Maggie's abductor - his fury at her escape, his fear at being caught and his twisted justification for kidnapping Maggie. The story unfolds between the three points of view of Ian, Maggie and Henry, overlapping at times to reveal the differing perspectives of the three, allowing us to follow their individual journeys.
Jahn reveals Hunt's grief in the aftermath of his daughters disappearance - the break down of his marriage, his anger at his son who was babysitting her, the end of his career and the solace he found in a bottle. Hunt is incredibly sympathetic even as he crosses the line into vigilantism. He has been driven past the point of the rational, his focus narrowed to saving his daughter and making her captor pay.
Maggie is fourteen now, she has spent seven years in a dank basement with only an imaginary friend for company, grimly holding tight to the knowledge of who she is. Her aborted escape doesn't dampen her spirit and while her strength is unlikely given the circumstances it is admirable and with every fibre of my being I was hoping she would escape.
With Henry's perspective we learn about his own desperation to make his wife happy, the only redeeming feature the man has. It's a fascinating look at motives that makes this man a monster, but still a human being.

The tension is unrelenting as Ian and the police try to determine the identity of Maggie's captor, as Maggie looks for another opportunity to escape and Henry grows increasingly anxious about being caught. An explosion of violence starts the chase across the country, Henry leaving a trail of bodies in his wake while Hunt races to catch them with a bullet wound in his chest. The violence in this novel is not graphic exactly but is real and not for the faint of heart. Ian and Henry are both desperate men, Henry determined to escape, Ian to rescue his daughter at any cost, even his own life.

The Dispatcher is a gritty, dark thriller with a frantic, intense pace. It is not a complex story but is nevertheless completely compelling and I couldn't put it down.

[myreadingescapism · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was definitely an interesting start to the book. Once we figured out what was going on, I kind of lost interest and wanted it to end. 🫠

[Sandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Talk about an adrenaline rush! I absolutely loved this book. From the moment Ian picked up the phone and heard his daughter’s voice on the other end, he was on a mission to find her. Two months earlier they had a memorial service (without a body) to put closure to the case of his missing daughter but it was more for Debbie his ex-wife who needed closure. His now, fifteen-year old daughter who had been missing for 8 years was alive and Ian was sure that this was no trick, Maggie was alive. How did she escape and did anyone see anything? Then enters Henry and Bea. Henry & Bea had not been planning on having children but when they had Sarah, they fell in love. A child was all Bea wanted and Henry wanted to please his wife. The manhunt is on and will Maggie see her father again?
There is some language in this book but under the circumstances, it is warranted. The drama and the intensity of some of the moments are top-notch and before you know it, the book has ended. Great book!

[Alex Evans · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book to be a little frustrating. The ending really got me because it just stopped...no explanation...no epilogue nothing. The beginning (well really first half) could have been much shorter to leave room to explain what happens at the end. It just seemed far fetched that so many acts of violence could be committed without an explanation of what happened to the characters. I would say an easy summer read but def. not a favorite.

[Noelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow! This book is fast paced, violent and bloody! I felt like I was watching a movie rather than reading a book. The determination of this father to get his daughter back is incredible. At the same time the insight to the mind-set of the "bad guys," is a whole different perspective. Well done!

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Dispatcher was a quick and fun read. If you think too hard about the situation and scenarios at times, it is a bit implausible in some situations, but if you just "go with it" it turns out to be a fun little page turner.

[Carla Galati · Rating 4 out of 5]

A gripping page-turner!

[Cyd · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5⭐️

[Chloe · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️ it’s giving “Taken” Texas version. More of an action thriller but I actually loved it and was a refreshing change to my normal reads.

[Pauline Coulthard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good story, but flawed, how can a fat old alcoholic outrun fit young women? And definitely won the world record for how many times you can say asphalt in a book

[Shannon Young · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall suspenseful. I enjoyed it.

[Wes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gritty dark thriller , where dirty Harry meets Death Wish . Rogue cop hunts down his daughters kidnappers, ok it's a bit far fetched, as Ian gets shot in the chest, has a collapsed lung, climbs out of his hospital bed, tortured the villains brother, and drives for best part of two days across the Texas desert and still manages to win the gun fight at the end. Far fetched yes definitely, but damn good entertainment in the best Hollywood action style. Once you get into it a real page turner

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't recall a ton of books that I've read over the last few years that deal with a father doing everything they need to do to protect their child. Other than Cormac McCarthy's The Road, my brain is a little stumped trying to remember another book that I've read that deals with the specific relationship of father and child. I don't even think I could name a book I've seen reviewed somewhere else in the last few years that reflect such a perspective. I could name off tons of book that deal with mothers protecting or rescuing their kids, but not fathers. I'm not sure if it's just that I'm not being exposed to the books, or if it's because they are being written. Whatever the explanation, when I read the synopsis of this book, I jumped at the chance to read it.

From the get go, Ian and his fight to get his daughter back kept me on the proverbial edge of my seat the entire time I had the book open. It was one of those reads that I didn't necessarily want to put down, and only did so under duress. Ian is a emotionally crippled man who has had to deal with his abduction of his daughter seven years ago, a horrific experience that has destroyed every other relationship he had. His wife left him for another police officer. The relationship with his son, who was in high school at the time of the abduction, is damaged beyond repair. Ian could not help but blame him for his sister's abduction. He never wanted to feel that way, but sometimes the brain really has no control over how someone is going to react.

From the moment Ian receives that phone call, he is racing against time. He doesn't know what the kidnapper will do now that he is in danger of being found out. When the bodies of 3 other female toddlers along with the nightgown Ian's daughter was wearing the night she disappeared are discovered on private property, they get the break they need. I'm not going to even get into how the bodies were discovered because it's the result of one of those seemingly random events that can get you into trouble, even if you don't realize it at the time. But the way it happens is brilliant and never seems to be unbelievable.

When the initial contact with the suspect ends up with two officers dead and Ian in the hospital, it's up to Ian to get his ass in gear and save his daughter on his own. He leaves the hospital and sets out on a crusade to get his daughter and his life back. He does someone that I'm sure some out there would find to be over the top or out of character, but I'm pretty damn sure I would have done the same thing Ian does. If someone had knowledge of where my son was at, and would not spill the beans, I would do everything I had to do to get that information. Rescuing my son would comes first, consequences can be dealt with after my child was safe.

What follows is a car chase across barren deserts and abandoned towns. It's a chase filled with violence and blood shed. Innocent people lose their lives along the way, people who were just trying to do the right thing. It's a bloody journey that I would pray no father would ever have to make, but it's a journey that any father should be willing to embark on in order to protect their child.

[Elizabeth A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

What means the most in life to you, and how far would you be willing to go to attain or keep it? Those questions are at the core of author Ryan David Jahn’s The Dispatcher, the follow up to his CWA John Creasey Dagger winning Acts of Violence.

Ian Hunt is a police dispatcher in Bulls Mouth, Texas whose life pretty much fell apart seven years ago on the night Maggie, his seven-year-old daughter, was kidnapped from her own bed. His marriage limped along for a bit before finally calling it quits, and a distance grew between Hunt and his son, Maggie’s older brother who had been responsible for watching her on the night she was taken. Maggie was never found.

Four months after having Maggie officially declared dead and holding a funeral for her at his ex-wife’s insistence, Hunt is at work one evening when he gets a 911 call from a teenage girl pleading for help; she’s escaped from the people holding her captive and made it to a pay phone on the edge of town. Just as Hunt realizes with a mixture of horror and elation that the girl on the other end of the phone is Maggie, the call is abruptly cut short as she’s snatched away from him again. Working with the brief description Maggie was able to give, Hunt begins a quest to find the kidnapper and get his daughter back at any cost, and god help anyone who gets in his way.

The Dispatcher is a book that’s not going to be for everyone. Despite that routine sounding setup – and the story itself is rather straightforward – Ryan David Jahn’s writing style is not nearly as routine or straightforward. Jahn propels the story along via frequent changes in the point of view from which the story is being told, with Hunt, Maggie, the kidnapper, and one of Hunt’s fellow officers all getting opportunities to advance the narrative. For some that will work as a way to keep things lively, but others may find it somewhat disruptive as you never really get to settle in with one character.

Additionally, The Dispatcher contains several scenes of extremely graphic violence, including a very methodical interrogation/torture episode that is most decidedly not for the faint of heart or those with a weak stomach. Again, this may not bother some and, in fact, there will probably be readers who will not only understand but sympathize with the extremes to which a parent is willing to go in order to rescue and protect their child. Where Jahn tries to make things morally and emotionally interesting is in the backstory behind the kidnapper’s motive, which reveals he’s acting out of a desire to make his family whole again after he and his wife lost their infant daughter. [That's not a spoiler.] Of course there’s no way this story can end well for everyone, but Jahn leaves his ending just ambiguous enough to either make you hopeful for the future or leave you frustrated at the lack of closure.

Bottom line, The Dispatcher is a traditional story of kidnapping and revenge with a somewhat nontraditional, and ultra-violent, style of presentation. Your personal preferences with regard to those factors will be the ultimate arbitrator of whether The Dispatcher works for you or not.

[Christina (A Reader of Fictions) · Rating 2 out of 5]

On first look, and perhaps the next several looks as well, The Dispatcher is a gritty story of revenge, of vigilante justice. It reads somewhat like an episode of CSI, Law and Order or Criminal Minds, if those were told from the perspective of a third person narrator, so that the audience knows what every party is thinking. Violence, action, and horrible people abound.

More than that, though, this book is a study in psychology and human nature. Jahn considers what humans are capable of doing when they feel their backs are to the wall. He also plumbs the emotion of love and what horrors can come out of it. None of the characters in this book come out of it without blood on their hands, whether literally or figuratively, but all of them, one could argue, and I do, are in some way motivated by love, and not love for themselves, but for someone else.

The opening sequence is definitely an attention grabber. It really made me think. I do not have kids, and have no interest in having any, but as I reader I try to put myself in the place of the characters as much as I am able to. Ian's love for his daughter is evident in the way he never gave up hoping she might be alive, despite the incredibly low and discouraging odds for the survival of abducted children. I wonder, though, whether it would be more painful to find out that your daughter had been dead all that time or that she was alive. Can you imagine the guilt you would feel that your daughter had been nearby all that time and you had given up the search and left her to whatever awful ministrations the kidnapper has been putting her through all of these years?

Incredibly tragic, too, is the character of Maggie Hunt. Even if she is rescued, how much hope is there for her now, really? She is 14, but having been kidnapped since she was 7, her mental development is stalled. Her only companion for years has been a grisly figment of her imagination. What capacity will she have for trust, for love?

If you enjoy seriously dark stories of murder and people pushed to their limits, Jahn's book may be for you. Be prepared, though, for an open ending. These always drive me crazy because I so much want to know!

[I_love_books · Rating 5 out of 5]

Im fiktiven Örtchen namens Bulls Mouth, Texas geschieht der Alptraum jeder Eltern: Ian Hunt & seine Frau gönnen sich einen Abend zu zweit, während der große Sohn auf seine kleine Schwester Maggie aufpassen soll. Sie wird klammheimlich aus ihrem Kinderbett entführt. Keiner hat etwas bemerkt, nur das zerschnittene Fliegengitter zeugt vom Eindringling. Maggie ist spurlos verschwunden. 7 Jahre später ist Hunts Leben so gut wie zerstört. Trotz dass Maggie’s Leichnam nie gefunden wurde, hat seine inzwischen geschiedene Frau auf eine Beisetzung bestanden. Der Kontakt zu seinem Sohn ist in die Brüche gegangen, da die Schuldfrage von Maggie’s Verschwinden unausgesprochen wie ein Damoklesschwert zwischen Ihnen beiden hing. Ian wurde zum Dispatcher (“Dispatcher” – so heißt übrigens der Originaltitel) des Polizeinotrufes degradiert und auch persönlich lässt er sich sehr gehen. Nur die Hoffnung, dass Maggie irgendwo da draußen ist, hält ihn am Leben. An einem stinknormalen Arbeitstag in der Notrufzentrale – zwischen Solitär-Spielen und Langerweile – wird ein einziger Anruf Ian völlig wachrütteln: Am anderen Ende der Leitung ruft ein Mädchen um Hilfe. Sie heiße Maggie, Maggie Hunt und sie versucht vor ihrem Entführer zu fliehen. SEINE Maggie lebt und Ian wird plötzlich bewusst, dass er zu allem fähig ist, um seine geliebte Tochter kein zweites Mal zu verlieren.

Mein Fazit
“Der Cop” ist gar nicht so leicht zu verdauen – geht es neben Kindesentführung auch um Jahre lange Folter der kleinen Maggie. Schnell wird dem Leser bewusst, wie geisteskrank und brutal ihre Entführer sind: Maggie ist nicht das erste Opfer, aber das einzige das bisher überlebt hat!

[Kathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a hard book for me to read. I usually don't like to read books that leave me all bloody. This book is written very graphically which was hard for me. Not my usual read. But it was for a book club discussion so I read it - in two evenings. I could not stop from reading it. It was like being at a train wreck. I had to know if the girl was saved. The author seems to bring the "hero" down to the level of the villain. The story left me wonder how life would ever be redeemable again for him. It surely won't be the same so maybe it is about sacrifices.

The book club discussion help me a lot in sorting it out in my head.

[Kirsty Wenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! I was on the edge of my seat the whole time! Fantastic, vivid writing and a book you just have to finish as soon as possible. Finished it in less than 24 hours. Quite violent and descriptive but it is in keeping with the genre of the book. Highly recommend this one!

[Sally Boocock · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't really like the main character Ian Hunt but liked Diego who gets drawn into Ian's plans through no fault of his own. It is a bit gory in places but a fast paced story.

[Ronnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one ultimately drew me in, and I went happily along for the ride, riveted to the end, but I didn't initially suspect that would be the case because of a few scenes/authorial decisions fairly early on that just to me defied belief and therefore bugged me. To wit: On the day our hero, Ian Hunt, gets the call from his daughter and he knows for the first time in seven years not only that she's alive but that she's made the call from a phone booth merely blocks away, is he really going to go on home after his shift at the 911 desk and drink his usual six pack of Guinness and go to bed like every other night? I read that and am pretty sure said "Come on, really?" aloud to an empty room. A similar scene happens later at the Motel/Food joint when he sees what he does on the diner TV and decides to head on back to his room to rest up--but at least by that point he's really hurting and knows he's miles away. Still, it seemed an unlikely reaction. Also it seemed to take an unlikely long time for him to put two and two together when his daughter gives him a pretty good description of her kidnapper and even manages to tell him his name starts with an H. How could he then be stationed outside of Henry's house--Henry whom Maggie has described to a T and on whose property some seriously implicating evidence has already been found--and still have doubts?

Such scenes seemed mostly intended to delay action and leave room for the backstory/exposition to catch up. That said, though, the action, when it happens is gritty, intense, and regularly really violent. The bad guy is really, really bad--disturbingly bad, even--while the good guy is, well, complexly good--a sympathetic character, yes, but someone who's been given reason to be well-acquainted with his own dark side.

Not to be petty, but something else made me lower my expectations very early on. On page 6 (which in my copy is the novel's fourth page) there's a sentence that starts like this: "He was also police, working out of the Tonkawa County Sheriff's Office in Bulls Mouth, just other side of the county jail...." I read that and thought, ok, a typo--not that unusual to run across--but then on the facing page, mere breaths away, there's this sentence: "Her headstone even now is planted in Hillside Cemetery just other side of Wallace Street." So now I'm thinking this phrasing must be intentional, but why? Why wouldn't the article "the" be inserted in both sentences between the words "just" and "other side of"? Who talks like that? It's "just the other side of" whatever, right? It's a quibbling thing, I know, but it's also the kind of thing that takes me right out of the story.

Fortunately, there are many more instances of what's right with the writing. The dialogue is mostly smooth, and there are eloquent passages throughout. This one stands out to me as a good example of the latter, probably because I know the area and Jahn clearly does, too:

In the two hundred miles between Junction and Fort Stockton, Texas, the landscape changes. the trees give way to shrubbery and low yellow flowers. The yellow flowers stretch from dry earth or dead grass. Desert hills erupt from the flat earth like goiters, and Interstate 10 cuts through many of them, leaving dynamited and scraped cliffs butting up to the asphalt and stacked up beside you in multi-colored layers descending into the past. The moisture leaves the air, and cacti soak up the sun, their fat pads like the flippers of some lost exotic underwater creature waving at you from the side of the road. Ancient stripper-well pumpjacks like prehistoric birds peck at the ground in the Permian Basin oil fields, moving in slow, sleepy, repetitious motion. The traffic thins to nothing but the occasional Mack truck hauling a load from coast to coast, driver red eyed and tweaked out, or some other lonesome traveler. Occasional desert rabbits splatter the shoulders of the road, revealing their hearts to you. Past the halfway point between these two towns, somewhere around Bakersfield, great fields of windmills turn slowly in the distance like ceiling fans on a mild day. Everything seems to move slowly in this mean desert heat, even your vehicle with the needle past eighty. You drive and drive but never seem to get anywhere.

That picture is pretty perfect and helps explain the comparisons of this book to Cormac McCarthy's No Country For Old Men, along with the violence that sort of brackets such passages.

First line:
"Ian Hunt is less than an hour from the end of his shift when he gets the call from his dead daughter."

[Lars · Rating 3 out of 5]

Take this: A police dispatcher who is using torture and who is willing to kill to get important information. Another cop who is covering his fellow by faking evidence. Sounds like two really bad guys in a crime novel? Wrong. Actually these two police officers are the good guys in Ryan David Jahn’s ‘The Dispatcher’. How is that? What could be a higher goal that makes you commit crimes and lose your moral standards? Exactly. The life of a child. In this case, the daughter of the dispatcher who was gone missing years ago, suddenly reappears in the beginning of the novel but is taken captive again by the messed-up villain, evoking a final chase through southern U.S. states.

There are several things I didn’t like about the book. I didn’t like the moral undertone of vigilantism. I didn’t like that despite the tragic situation, the author feeds his protagonists with a good portion of acid humor. I didn’t like the logical faults - half a dozen of children disappeared in a small town, but it seems there hasn’t been a serious investigation. And I didn’t like the voyeurism, describing the slaughter of innocent characters in detail. On the other hand, this is pulp crime. Good pulp crime. And I have to admit that Jahn is very skilled in creating a dense, suspenseful atmosphere. It is hard not to get captivated by the story and in the end, it is a real pageturner. So I guess I’ll give the author another try. If you like stories covering the search for a beloved child, you could also try ‘Angel Baby’ by Richard Lange.

[Norma · Rating 4 out of 5]

NB - not the edition pictured.
(Format : Audiobook )
"Just you and me alone with an axe."

There is an immediacy to this story as the reader is taken through a man's quest to find his daughter, Maggie, missing and believed dead for seven years. In the interim, he and his wife had divorced and she remarried, they had even held a funeral for their missing little girl who would now have been be in her mid teens. Then one morning Ian, the police dispatches who takes other people's emergency calls, receives one from someone asking for help, calling him Daddy but is snatched away from the line before she is able to say from whom she is running. And Ian believes her. His daughter is still alive and he must find her whatever it might cost.
The immediacy comes from the way the book is written, from the changing perspectives of the various players Ian himself and that of the abductor, Maggie herself, and others involved including the individual policemen. And it is also written almost entirely in the present. It is, understandably, a story of urgency, anger and violence, too. The narrator, Jeff Harding, is well chosen. He gives a fine performance with one exception: the speech is too slow, but increasing the playback speed to 1.3 recovers this.

An unusual book of dedication and pursuit, this is a book I know will stay in my memory, and is recommended. It has the added advantage of currently being free to download with the Audible Plus programme.

[Rebecca Garner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Honestly, I would had never decided on reading this type of book if it hadn't been for a friend showing it to me and telling me to "Try it." I would give The Dispatcher three stars, because there were multiple things I did not like about the book. The first thing that I did not like about the book was the amount of curse words in it. I do not like cursing, especially when it occurs in a book in about every page. The second thing that I did not like was there were two instances of sensuality that occurred in the book that made me want to stop reading the book. The third and thing that I did not like was that the book is in third person point of view and it switched from the different characters, and by the time I was halfway through a chapter, I would figure out whose thoughts were being used, most of the time.The fourth and final thing that I did not like was the violence in the book. It was very descriptive and just plain gross. I didn't like that regardless of the fact that I know it is a crime book, and those typically have a lot of violence in them. But, despite what I didn't like about the book, it was a real page turner. I've never read a book by Ryan David Jahn, and probably won't ever read another book by him if it included those things that I did not like at all. The book starts out with Ian Hunt, a policeman in Bulls Mouth, Texas, receives a call from his daughter that was kidnapped when she was seven. But, right now, she is fourteen years old, about to turn fifteen. She was assumed dead four months ago, to give her mother closure from all of the emotions of knowing your daughter could be dead or alive. Ian receives the call from Maggie, his daughter, and is told that she is alive, and that he needs to come save her. She is about to tell her father who the kidnapper was, but the line went dead, which in later in the book, is because the kidnapper finds her and takes her back to where was to begin with. The man who kidnapped her is Henry Dean and he has a wife, Beatrice Dean. These two people are absolutely crazy. Back when they were young, Beatrice had a baby. The parents named her Sarah. For some odd reason, just a few months after she was born, Beatrice kills her baby. She is giving her newborn a bath and leaves "to get some toys" and swears up and down that she "was only gone for a minute," comes back to her baby underwater, dead. Beatrice was heartbroken. Henry, knowing that Beatrice is depressed, buries Sarah and then later kidnaps the second "Sarah." The second Sarah ends up dead not long after she was kidnapped, which this time, it is Henry's fault. Sarah misbehaves and Henry spanks her as punishment. The girl screams and Henry puts his hand over her mouth for so long, he suffocates her, and she dies. Then, to prevent Beatrice from being depressed again, Henry kidnaps another "Sarah," this time it is a baby from the supermarket. It dies soon after too. This time, it is because Beatrice thought she would breastfeed the new Sarah, but she is no longer producing milk, causing the baby to die from starvation. Finally, he kidnaps yet another "Sarah" from her own home, this being Maggie, Ian Hunt's daughter. And this is where we are now with Maggie being the new Sarah. She lives in the Dean's basement for seven years, living an absolute nightmare. Henry and Beatrice just want to be a happy family, but cannot be with Maggie, because of the fear of her escaping. She receives beatings from Henry when she does something wrong, often going to the "Punishment Hook." All Maggie, or Sarah, wants to do is get home to her daddy and be with her actual family. Little does she know that her family tore apart after she was kidnapped. Ian and his wife, Debbie, are divorced. And, his son Jeffery, that blames himself for Maggie's kidnapping because he was babysitting her that night, is twenty-two and has resided in a different state. But, Maggie still wants to go home. She manages to escape, which is the way she was able to call Ian. Later in the book, police find where Henry buried all three girls that him and wife murdered, and Ian figures out that Henry took his daughter due to finding Maggie's pink nightgown that she was kidnapped in, in the evidence. He is determined to get his daughter back. When him, and two other cops go to Henry's house to question him, everything that could possibly go wrong does. Henry is on the run, and will do anything to get out town with his "family." He shoots one cop in the face, another in the chest, and shoots Ian in the chest causing him to have a collapsed lung, and Henry was able to escape. Ian stayed in the hospital until he left to go find his daughter regardless of his medical condition. To get information on where Henry is going, Ian ends up torturing Donald Dean, Henry's younger brother, by hacking off his fingers and toes, and finally kills him after getting his information. He then sets off to California, where Henry is going to live with his older brother. As the book goes back and forth between Henry's and Ian's point of view, they are both heading to California. Henry kills three more people including another cop, along the way and Ian is battling his medical condition the whole time. By the time, they both are in California, Henry knows that Ian is coming for him along with a fellow cop, a loyal friend. They have a shooting battle ending with Ian finally pulling the trigger on Henry and killing the man that took his daughter, his life, away from him. Beatrice also kills herself, because she knows that she will never have a family and would probably suffer the same fate, just with lethal injection. Ian is reunited with his daughter at last, and then the book ends with everyone being happy for that day, knowing that tomorrow will be a lot different, but they are just worried about living in the moment. The book was halfway decent, and would had been great without the things that didn't work for me. I loved that Ian was such a good father to Maggie and never stopped trying to save her. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes crime, mystery, or thriller books all wrapped up into one.

[Nazanin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to this book for free on Audible. While I found some parts enjoyable, it fell short in so many things. The storyline felt clichéd, and the emotional depth I expected from a story about a missing child just wasn’t there. It barely scratched the surface of what a family—or the individual herself—would truly experience after seven years of missing.

One things that really pissed me off was when Hunt called his son to share the news, and the son was like, whatever... It felt so unrealistic and detached, completely missing the gravity of the situation.

The book also failed to explore the psychological impact on someone who’s been isolated from the outside world for so long. She should not be able to comprehend or understand so many things that was happening around here. this made the story feel shallow and incomplete.

Another thing that bothered me was how the female characters were shown—slow, naive and underdeveloped. B had so much potential to be a complex character, but she was written in such a one-dimensional way that it felt like a missed opportunity.

Overall, I somehow enjoyed listening to it, but I wouldn't read it again.

[Lisa Butler · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book I read for my book challenge prompt
Title Of The Book Is "The ________" (One Other Word)

The dispatcher is a fast paced dark book from start to finish.

When a 911 dispatcher Ian Hunt takes a call from his 14-year-old daughter Maggie who was kidnapped seven years ago and is presumed dead, it sets off a desperate chase to find and rescue the girl. 

The story Is told through the POV of different characters
and each chapter alternates between Hunt, his daughter, the kidnapper and Hunt's cop friend, Diego.

The book at times is very violent and the writing style meant I could easily imagine this as a cinematic film.
The author does a good job of gaining sympathy for both the kidnapper and understanding his reasons for doing so and her father who goes to extremes of torturing someone graphically to get information about his daughter.

It questions your own morals and how far you would go to save your daughter.

This book is a fast paced thriller that has you hooked from the start. My only fault was the ending was a bit too neat and tied up with a pretty bow.

[Shera Melton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was interesting and kind of hard to review. So to start, I definitely think this book has a pacing issue. It had some high stakes, fast paced, violent scenes, but then it had many pages of slow character development and just following characters' train of thought as they processed things about their lives in their minds. It resulted in a weird reading pace. It was like run-run-run-run... wwwwwwaaaaallllllkkkkk... run-run-run-run... wwwwwwaaaaallllllkkkkk...

Also, this book was published in 2011 and it doesn't say anywhere in the book that it is set in the past. But it feels like it was set in the 90's. Other than the characters all having cell phones, this book feels very 90's. That's not a bad thing, it was just a bit confusing.

However, the actual writing was very well done and the story seemed to come off the page and transport you to a small town in Texas. I liked this a lot, but I didn't love it.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

A gripping and emotionally intense listen, this audiobook dives headfirst into a story of long-buried trauma and desperate redemption. The premise—receiving a call from a daughter thought dead for seven years—immediately hooks you, and the tension rarely lets up.

The narration brings urgency and emotion to the experience, helping to convey the protagonist's raw desperation and relentless drive. The action is punchy and relentless, and the pacing moves fast enough to keep you hooked from start to finish.

However, while the story succeeds as a tense thriller, there are moments where the emotional weight or character development could have been explored more deeply. Some relationships and motivations felt slightly underdeveloped, especially given the gravity of the situation.