Book Review: Murder by Other Means

Murder by Other Means by John Scalzi


This short audiobook is the sequel to The Dispatcher, a murder mystery set in a world in which anyone who is murdered returns to life at home unharmed. The protagonist, Tony, has a job in which he murders people who are about to die by other means so that they get a second chance. In the time since the previous book, Tony has lost his contract working with the Chicago police, but he still has one friend on the force, Nora Langden, who seeks him out when Tony just happens to be present during a bank robbery gone wrong.

What unfolds next is a grim police procedural involving corrupt Chinese businessmen, Chicago mafiosos, freaky death clubs, murder, arson and narrow escapes from grim fates. As with serial killers and cozy mystery murderers, the bad guys go on a killing spree, senselessly murdering anyone who is even tangentially a witness to the original crime, which makes for an exciting read even if it doesn’t quite hold up when you’re thinking about it a few hours later in the shower. Scalzi has a tendency to overexplain, and there’s his usual problem with everyone having the same or very similar speech patterns, but it was still a worthwhile story with good pacing and plenty of twists to keep the plot going. I admired the Sci-fi originality of changing just one tiny detail in a world that otherwise is identical to ours, and then playing that out to its extremes. I worried that the narrator (Zachary Quinto) was chosen more for his geek fan-cred than his voice acting ability, but Quinto did an admirable job with making the voices distinct.




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