The Dispatcher
25 September 2025Synopsis
The phone rings. It's your daughter. She's been dead for four months.
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.
Soon to be adapted by Apple TV, The Dispatcher is a riveting novel from Ryan David Jahn – the acclaimed author of Acts of Violence and Low Life – about the lengths a man will go to for his daughter, perfect for fans of Lee Child and the Taken film series.
*****
Praise for The Dispatcher:
'A one-sitting, fist-in-mouth read' – The Guardian
'Talk about page-turning' – Daily Mirror
'The author leads the new noir pack' – Financial Times
'If you only read one book tomorrow, make it this one' – GQ
'Cue a breathless, bloody chase all the way to California' – Sunday Telegraph
Details
25 September 2025
9781035087617Reviews
The Dispatcher, which reads at a cracking pace, is a one-sitting, fist-in-mouth readGuardian
Reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy's tales of vengeance, The Dispatcher is an impressively accomplished performance that never strains for mythic power but nevertheless acquires itSunday Times
Jahn is the fastest rising star in the ever-competitive crime fiction world . . . He is more a poet than a disciple of the hard-boiled, giving us one brutally swift, ultra-smart line after another. The characters live and breathe in all their wickedness, helplessness or determination. And then there are the plots . . . talk about page-turning.Daily Mirror
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 . . . The author 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 - in a mean, lean, unclean wayFinancial Times
