THE DISPATCHER

Seven years after his daughter vanishes from her bedroom, and two months after he’s finally agreed to a funeral for her, a Texas police dispatcher gets a phone call that turns his world upside down.

Unlike his ex-wife Debbie, Ian Hunt never gave up hope that their daughter, who was only seven when someone sliced the screen in her bedroom window and carried her off, might still be alive. So when a frantic young woman calling herself “Sarah…No, my name is Maggie, Maggie Hunt” phones 911 and says that she’s just escaped from the man who’s been holding her prisoner, Ian is ready to leap into action. Unfortunately, Henry Dean spots her and snatches her again before she can identify him to her father. But a trick of fate is about to lead Chief Todd Davis, of the Bulls Mouth Police Department, and Tonkawa County Sheriff’s Deputy Bill Finch, who just happens to be Debbie’s second husband, straight to Dean’s door. Not even the bloody showdown that follows can slow down Ian once he’s scented his quarry and confirmed that the precious daughter he left in her brother’s care while he and Debbie went on a married-folks’ date is alive and looking for him. A scene as harrowing as anything in Good Neighbors (2011) offers graphic proof that he’ll stop at absolutely nothing to track her down. Bullets and pages fly furiously as Ian pursues Dean, his fragile wife Beatrice and Maggie across the Southwest to Kaiser, Calif., where a final confrontation with Dean and his equally well-armed brother Ron awaits.

“This isn’t how it was supposed to happen,” think Jahn’s luckless characters over and over again. Wrong. For fans of action-packed suspense, this is exactly how it’s supposed to happen.