The Dispatcher

The Thriller That Inspired the Apple TV+ Series “Last Seen”

From CWA John Creasey Dagger Award-winning author Ryan David Jahn

The phone rings. It's your daughter. She's been dead for four months.

So begins East Texas police dispatcher Ian Hunt's fight to get his daughter back. The call is cut off by the man who snatched her from her bedroom seven years ago, and a basic description of the kidnapper is all Ian has to go on.

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 Dispatcher, which reads at a cracking pace, is a one-sitting, fist-in-mouth read — The Guardian

Reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy's tales of vengeance, The Dispatcher is an impressively accomplished performance that never strains for mythic power but nevertheless acquires it — The Sunday 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 — The 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 way — The Financial Times

To call Ryan David Jahn's new novel a fast-paced thriller is a bit like saying David Haye can box a little, or that Alex Ferguson is good at man management . . . If you only read one book tomorrow, make it this one — GQ

Cue a breathless, bloody chase all the way to California in which the second meaning of the title - the killer - comes to the fore — The Sunday Telegraph

Violent, vivid, and disturbing, The Dispatcher is a stomach churner. If you want a book that grabs you-almost chokes you-and won't let go, this is it. But it should come with a warning label: Caution, a serious writer at work — Ridley Pearson, New York Times bestselling author of Killer Summer

The Dispatcher grabs the reader on page one and never lets go. It's a classic yet bracingly contemporary story of kidnapping, violence, and a father's ferocious courage — Jonathan Santlofer, author of Anatomy of Fear

A well-written, fast-paced book . . . along the order of Quentin Tarantino and with a long and bloody trail to the end — Charlaine Harris, bestselling author of the Sookie Stackhouse series