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Ben H. Winters

The Last Policeman: A Novel (Last Policeman Trilogy Book 1) Kindle Edition

by Ben H. Winters (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.0 4,257 ratings

Book 1 of 3: Last Policeman Trilogy

Editors' pick Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

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"[The] weird, beautiful, unapologetically apocalyptic Last Policeman trilogy is one of my favorite mystery series."—John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns

Winner of the 2013 Edgar® Award Winner for Best Paperback Original!

What’s the point in solving murders if we’re all going to die soon, anyway?

Detective Hank Palace has faced this question ever since asteroid 2011GV1 hovered into view. There’s no chance left. No hope. Just six precious months until impact.

The Last Policeman presents a fascinating portrait of a pre-apocalyptic United States. The economy spirals downward while crops rot in the fields. Churches and synagogues are packed. People all over the world are walking off the job—but not Hank Palace. He’s investigating a death by hanging in a city that sees a dozen suicides every week—except this one feels suspicious, and Palace is the only cop who cares.

The first in a trilogy, The Last Policeman offers a mystery set on the brink of an apocalypse. As Palace’s investigation plays out under the shadow of 2011GV1, we’re confronted by hard questions way beyond “whodunit.” What basis does civilization rest upon? What is life worth? What would any of us do, what would we really do, if our days were numbered?

Ebook contains an excerpt from the anticipated second book in the trilogy, Countdown City.

Book 1 of 3

Last Policeman Trilogy
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July 10, 2012
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Popular Highlights in this book

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The end of the world changes everything, from a law-enforcement perspective.
Highlighted by 432 Kindle readers
People’s inability to face up to this thing is worse than the thing, it really is.
Highlighted by 284 Kindle readers
The perseverance in this world, despite it all, of things done right.
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From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, July 2012: It’s not often you hear a book described as a pre-apocalyptic police procedural. But in the hands of Ben Winters (Sense and Sensibility and Seamonsters), the mash-up of murder mystery and gloomy end-of-world melodrama works perfectly. Detective Hank Palace knows the world will likely be destroyed in six months by the meteor headed toward earth like a bullet. But unlike those who are giving up, quitting jobs, doing drugs, running away, or killing themselves, Palace has a job to do. He’s got a murder to solve. So he keeps plugging away, unwilling to let the looming apocalypse distract him from finding the killer. Palace is an appealingly off-kilter character, more goofball than hard-boiled. So it’s a very good thing that this is the first in a planned trilogy. --Neal Thompson

Amazon Exclusive: Q&A with Ben H. Winters

The Last Policeman is set in a world in which a massive asteroid is hurtling toward Earth, but the novel centers on one detective's murder investigation. Where did you get the idea to combine these two disparate elements of storytelling?

Well, you know, story ideas are like giant planet-dooming asteroids: they always take you by surprise. But I've always had a soft spot for certain kinds of science fiction, books that imagine one grand change to the human situation and tease it out. P. D. James's Children of Men is a marvelous example, or Philip José Farmer's Riverworld series.

The "pre-apocalyptic" side of this "pre-apocalyptic murder mystery" definitely came first. I thought it would be fascinating to imagine my way into the sad and terrifying last months of civilization. Then I set about imagining the right hero for this kind of book, and I thought that what I needed was someone who is extremely dedicated to his work, who cannot let the world end before solving the puzzle before him. That's where the character of Detective Henry Palace came from, my intensely, even bizarrely dedicated public servant.

The obligatory question: What would you do if Earth would be annihilated in six months?

Well, I'm under contract with Quirk Books to write the sequel to The Last Policeman, so first I'd get that done.

Just kidding. I think, honestly, that I would spend time with my children. I'd read them a lot of books, and take them to beautiful places, and try to prevent them from hearing anything about what was coming. (The idea of that, by the way, makes me tearful, as it did periodically over the course of writing this.)

Can you give us any details about the upcoming second and third novels in the series?

Like The Last Policeman, each of the sequels will have at its center a crime that Palace is trying to solve. But, also like this one, each will be at least equally interested in the details of the disintegrating world, and in plumbing the psyche of this lawman: how and why he remains "on the job" even as the job, along with the rest of civilization, crumbles around him.

Review

Winner of the 2013 Edgar® Award for Best Paperback Original
One of Slate’s Best Books of 2012
A July 2012 Indie Next List Pick

“It’s funny, it’s thrilling, it’s crazy, it’s interesting.”—Jenna Bush Hager, TODAY with Hoda & Jenna

“Winters’s apocalyptic detective story contains an earth-shattering element of science fiction that lifts it beyond a typical procedural.”—New York Times Book Review

“An appealing hybrid of the best of science fiction and crime fiction.”—The Washington Post

"[The] weird, beautiful, unapologetically apocalyptic Last Policeman trilogy is one of my favorite mystery series."—John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns

“In his acclaimed Last Policeman trilogy, Winters showed off his mastery of edgy, sardonic wit — there’s nothing like an asteroid speeding toward Earth to bring out the black humor in people.”—Newsday

“Sharp, funny, and deeply wise.”—Slate.com

“Darkly intriguing.”—Discover

“I’m in the middle of it and can’t put the dang thing down.”—USA Today’s Pop Candy

“Exhilarating.”—E! Online

“Ben Winters makes noir mystery even darker: his latest novel sets a despondent detective on a suspicious suicide case—while an asteroid hurtles toward earth.”—Wired.com

“Winters’s writing is funny, surprisingly tender, and thoroughly human.”—Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

“A sturdy, functional, entertaining page-turner.”—Greg Cook, WBUR.org

“I’m eager to read the other books, and expect that they’ll keep me as enthralled as the first one did.”—Mark Frauenfedler, Boing Boing

“The Last Policeman is extraordinary—as well as brilliant, surprising, and, considering the circumstances, oddly uplifting.”—Mystery Scene

“Full of compelling twists, likable characters, and a sad beauty, The Last Policeman is a gem.”—San Francisco Book Review

“This is a book that asks big questions about civilization, community, desperation and hope.”—io9

“In his Last Policeman trilogy, for which he won both the Edgar Award and the Philip K. Dick Award, Winters took a standard science fiction trope — the final months before an asteroid slams into Earth — and mixed it with some of the conventions of the detective novel, imbuing his apocalyptic scenario with an extra measure of urgency and poignancy.”—The San Francisco Chronicle

“The Last Policeman succeeds both as a mystery, with a quirky detective and an intriguing whodunit, and as a piece of apocalyptic speculative fiction.”—Sacramento News & Review

“Resonant and powerful.”—Locus

“A promising kickoff to a planned trilogy. For Winters, the beauty is in the details rather than the plot’s grim main thrust.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

From AudioFile

About the Author

New York Times best-selling author Ben H. Winters won an Edgar Award for his debut mystery The Last Policeman. His YA novel The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman was also nominated for an Edgar Award. He lives in Indianapolis with his wife and three children. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I’m staring at the insurance man and he’s staring at me, two cold gray eyes behind old-fashioned tortoiseshell frames, and I’m having this awful and inspiring feeling, like holy moly this is real, and I don’t know if I’m ready, I really don’t.
I narrow my eyes and I steady myself and I take him in again, shift on my haunches to get a closer look. The eyes and the glasses, the weak chin and the receding hairline, the thin black belt tied and tightened beneath the chin.
This is real. Is it? I don’t know.
I take a deep breath, demanding of myself that I focus, block out everything but the corpse, block out the grimy floors and the tinny rock-and-roll Muzak from the cheap speakers in the ceiling.
The smell is killing me, a pervasive and deeply unpleasant odor, like a horse barn that’s been splashed with French-fry grease. There are any number of jobs in this world still being efficiently and diligently accomplished, but the late-night cleaning of twentypoliceman four-hour fast-food-restaurant bathrooms is not among them. Case in point: the insurance man had been slumped over in here, lodged between the toilet and the dull green wall of the stall, for several hours before Officer Michelson happened to come in, needing to use the john, and discovered him.
Michelson called it in as a 10-54S, of course, which is what it looks like. One thing I’ve learned in the last few months, one thing we’ve all learned, is that suicides-by-hanging rarely end up dangling from a light fixture or a roof beam, like in the movies. If they’re serious, and nowadays everybody is serious, would-be suicides fasten themselves to a doorknob, or to a coat hook, or, as the insurance man appears to have done, to a horizontal rail, like the grab bar in a handicapped stall. And then they just lean forward, let their weight do the work, tighten the knot, seal the airway.
I angle farther forward, readjust my crouch, trying to find a way to share space comfortably with the insurance man without falling or getting my fingerprints all over the scene. I’ve had nine of these in the three and a half months since I became a detective, and still I can’t get used to it, to what death by asphyxiation does to a person’s face: the eyes staring forward as if in horror, laced with thin red spiderwebs of blood; the tongue, rolled out and over to one side; the lips, inflated and purplish at the edges. I close my eyes, rub them with my knuckles, and look again, try to get a sense of what the insurance man’s appearance had been in life. He wasn’t handsome, that you can see right away. The face is doughy and the proportions are all just a little off: chin too small, nose too big, the eyes almost beady behind the thick lenses.
What it looks like is that the insurance man killed himself with a long black belt. He fastened one end to the grab bar and worked the other end into the hangman’s knot that now digs brutally upward into his Adam’s apple.
“Hey, kid. Who’s your friend?”
“Peter Anthony Zell,” I answer quietly, looking up over my shoulder at Dotseth, who has opened the door of the stall and stands grinning down at me in a jaunty plaid scarf, clutching a steaming cup of McDonald’s coffee.
“Caucasian male. Thirty-eight years old. He worked in insurance.”
“And let me guess,” says Dotseth. “He was eaten by a shark. Oh, wait, no: suicide. Is it suicide?”
“It appears that way.”
“Shocked, I am! Shocked!” Denny Dotseth is an assistant attorney general, a warhorse with silver hair and a broad, cheerful face. “Oh, geez, I’m sorry, Hank. Did you want a cup of coffee?”
“No, thank you, sir.”
I give Dotseth a report on what I’ve learned from the black faux-leather wallet in the victim’s back pocket. Zell was employed at a company called Merrimack Life and Fire, with offices in the Water West Building, off Eagle Square. A little collection of movie stubs, all dating from the last three months, speaks to a taste for adolescent adventure: the Lord of the Rings revival; two installments of the sci-fi serial Distant Pale Glimmers; the DC-versus-Marvel thing at the IMAX in Hooksett. No trace of a family, no photographs in the wallet at all. Eighty-five dollars in fives and tens. And a driver’s license, with an address here in town: 14 Matthew Street Extension, South Concord.
“Oh, sure. I know that area. Some nice little town houses down that way. Rolly Lewis has a place over there.”
“And he got beat up.”
“Rolly?”
“The victim. Look.” I turn back to the insurance man’s distorted face and point to a cluster of yellowing bruises, high on the right cheek. “Someone banged him one, hard.”
“Oh, yeah. He sure did.”
Dotseth yawns and sips his coffee. New Hampshire statute has long required that someone from the office of the attorney general be called whenever a dead body is discovered, so that if a murder case is to be built, the prosecuting authority has a hand in from Go. In mid-January this requirement was overturned by the state legislature as being unduly onerous, given the present unusual circumstances—Dotseth and his colleagues hauling themselves all over the state just to stand around like crows at murder scenes that aren’t murder scenes at all. Now, it’s up to the discretion of the investigating officer whether to call an AAG to a 10-54S. I usually go ahead and call mine in.
“So what else is new, young man?” says Dotseth. “You still
playing a little racquetball?”
“I don’t play racquetball, sir,” I say, half listening, eyes locked on the dead man.
“You don’t? Who am I thinking of?”
I’m tapping a finger on my chin. Zell was short, five foot six maybe; stubby, thick around the middle. Holy moly, I’m still thinking, because something is off about this body, this corpse, this particular presumptive suicide, and I’m trying to figure out what it is.
“No phone,” I murmur.
“What?”
“His wallet is here, and his keys, but there’s no cell phone.”
Dotseth shrugs. “Betcha he junked it. Beth just junked hers. Service is starting to get so dicey, she figured she might as well get rid of the darn thing now.“
I nod, murmur “sure, sure,” still staring at Zell.
“Also, no note.”
“What?”
“There’s no suicide note.”
“Oh, yeah?” he says, shrugs again. “Probably a friend will find it. Boss, maybe.” He smiles, drains the coffee. “They all leave notes, these folks. Although, you have to say, explanation not really necessary at this point, right?”
“Yes, sir,” I say, running a hand over my mustache. “Yes, indeed.”
Last week in Kathmandu, a thousand pilgrims from all over southeast Asia walked into a massive pyre, monks chanting in a circle around them before marching into the blaze themselves. In central Europe, old folks are trading how-to DVDs: How toWeigh Your Pockets with Stones, How to Mix a Barbiturate Cocktail in the Sink. In the American Midwest—Kansas City, St. Louis, Des Moines—the trend is firearms, a solid majority employing a shotgun blast to the brain.
Here in Concord, New Hampshire, for whatever reason, it’s hanger town. Bodies slumped in closets, in sheds, in unfinished basements. A week ago Friday, a furniture-store owner in East Concord tried to do it the Hollywood way, hoisted himself from an overhanging length of gutter with the sash of his bathrobe, but the gutter pipe snapped, sent him tumbling down onto the patio, alive but with four broken limbs.
“Anyhow, it’s a tragedy,” Dotseth concludes blandly. “Every one of them a tragedy.”
He shoots a quick look at his watch; he’s ready to boogie. But I’m still down in a squat, still running my narrowed eyes over the body of the insurance man. For his last day on earth, Peter Zell chose a rumpled tan suit and a pale blue button-down dress shirt. His socks almost but don’t quite match, both of them brown, one dark and one merely darkish, both loose in their elastic, slipping down his calves. The belt around his neck, what Dr. Fenton will call the ligature, is a thing of beauty: shiny black leather, the letters B&R etched into the gold buckle.
“Detective? Hello?” Dotseth says, and I look up at him and I blink. “Anything else you’d like to share?”
“No, sir. Thank you.”
“No sweat. Pleasure as always, young man.”
“Except, wait.”
“Sorry?”
I stand up straight and turn and face him. “So. I’m going to murder somebody.” A pause. Dotseth waiting, amused, exaggerated patience. “All righty.”
“And I live in a time and a town where people are killing themselves all over the place. Right and left. It’s hanger town.”
“Okay.”
“Wouldn’t my move be, kill my victim and then arrange it to appear as a suicide?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe, right?”
“Yeah. Maybe. But that right there?” Dotseth jabs a cheerful thumb toward the slumped corpse. “That’s a suicide.”
He winks, pushes open the door of the men’s room, and leaves me alone with Peter Zell. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0076Q1GW2
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Quirk Books (July 10, 2012)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 10, 2012
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 3029 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 322 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #219,523 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
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Ben H. Winters

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Ben H. Winters is the author most recently of the novel The Quiet Boy (Mulholland/Little, Brown, 2021). He is also the author of the novel Golden State; the New York Times bestselling Underground Airlines; The Last Policeman and its two sequels; the horror novel Bedbugs; and several works for young readers. His first novel, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, was also a Times bestseller. Ben has won the Edgar Award for mystery writing, the Philip K. Dick award in science fiction, the Sidewise Award for alternate history, and France’s Grand Prix de L’Imaginaire. Ben also writes for film and television; he was a producer on the FX show Legion, and on the upcoming Apple TV+ drama Manhunt. He has contributed short stories to many anthologies, as well as in magazines such as Lightspeed. He is the author of three “Audible Originals”– Inside Jobs, Q&A, and Self Help — and several plays and musicals. His reviews and essays have appeared in Slate and in the New York Times Book Review. Ben was born in Washington, D.C., grew up in Maryland, educated in St. Louis, and then grew up a bunch more, in various ways, in places like Chicago, New York, Cambridge, MA, and Indianapolis, IN. These days he lives in LA with his wife, three kids, and one large dog.

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an’t wait for the concluding book, Highly recommended

Reviewed in the United States on January 19, 2014

Verified Purchase

Because I read Ben Winter’s The Last Policeman and Countdown City over the course of a day and a half, I’m going to review them together rather than singly. Though really, the fact that I read them both in that time period is probably all you need to know about what I thought of them. (no spoilers even though I discuss the second book)

The two novels are set in Concord, N.H. and center on newly-made detective Hank Palace as he tries to solve a possible murder/insurance fraud in the first novel and a missing person’s case in the second. Oh yeah, and there’s also the little matter of the imminent collapse of human society thanks to the extinction-level asteroid coming Earth’s way in six months in The Last Policeman and in only 77 days in Countdown City.

Typically, these sorts of stories give us a somewhat world-weary detective facing multiple obstacles in order to get to the truth and restore at least a semblance of order on the (possibly very small) world. Here, though, there will be no restoration of world order, as the world is about to end. And the “obstacles” aren’t simply a corrupt or slow bureaucracy, but an entire society that has pretty much given up: people are leaving their jobs in droves, “going bucket” to realize dreams they once had; communication lines are dying off as employees disappear and people stop paying bills; even McDonalds has shut down. Our first-person narrator Hank describes the current situation this way:
There are differences in behavior, but they are on the margins. The main difference, from a law-enforcement perspective, is more atmospheric. . The mood here in town is that of the child who isn’t in trouble yet, but knows he’s going to be. He’s up in his room, waiting. “Just wait till your father gets home.” He’s sullen and snappish, he’s on edge. Confused, sad, trembling against the knowledge of what’s coming next, and right on the edge of violence, not angry but anxious in a way that can easily shade into anger.

As for the authorities, the police force is down to less than a skeletal staff (though they and the govt. are the only ones still able to have cars/gas); the crime lab is nearly non-existent; and anyway—who cares whether someone commits a crime at this point? As for world-weary, well, Hank is young, a relative innocent in the ways of the normal world, let alone this one, and he’s tired of “People hiding behind the asteroid, like it’s an excuse for poor conduct, for miserable and desperate and selfish behavior.”

And there is a good amount of that sort of behavior going on as Hank tries against all odds to solve the murder of Peter Fell, insurance investigator found with a belt wrapped around his neck in a pirate McDonald’s bathroom, though everyone else simply dismisses him as the typical “hangar”—suicide method of choice in Concord (other regions have their own favorite methods).

Hank’s desire to do a job well contrasts the wry fatalism that runs throughout most of the novel, either in the background (references to end-of-the-world songs playing) or in the foreground via dialog:
I used to want to be a cop.
Hey, it’s never too late.
Well, it is though.

In The Last Policeman, the asteroid and the reactions to it mostly plays out in this fatalism, sometimes dry, sometimes sad, occasionally but rarely violent. I really liked the fact that Winter doesn’t dwell on the asteroid itself, whose discovery, approach and impending results are only gradually and minimally revealed. This is a quiet pre-apocalyptic novel, not a bang-bang Road Warrior/The Road sort of post-apocalyptic one.

The mystery is well plotted and interesting in its own right, but really what makes this book (both books) so compelling is the rich pre-apocalyptic atmosphere and Hank’s characterization, along with other characters that come in and out of the mix—his somewhat oddball sister, who is mixed up with conspiracy theorists; Dr. Fenton, the local coroner who also believes in a job done well regardless of context; Sgt. Culverson, a mentor figure for Hank; and a host of others large and small.

By the time of Countdown City, the more imminent end has turned Concord much more dangerous as people begin to hoard food, loot, use guns to defend themselves or take from others, and so on. Hank is no longer on the force by this time, so as he looks for the missing husband of a childhood friend, his difficulties are exponentially higher, especially as he no longer has vehicle access and has to bike/walk everywhere. Countdown City is a darker, more violent, grimmer work, but still with lots of the wryly flat gallows humor of the first book.

I only had a few minor, very minor, complaints. One is we have a few too many shootout/helicopter-at-the-last-minute moments, though really there aren’t all that many. It’s just that the focus on people and relationships is so quietly good that those moments are a bit jarring, though they do make perfect sense in the context of the setting (save for that damn helicopter arrival). Another is that the missing husband character is played a bit too goody-goody with the “He’s just Brett” phrase used a bit too freely. But as I mentioned, these were minor complaints. I was captivated by both setting and character in both, opening up Countdown City on my Kindle immediately upon finishing The Last Policeman. I can’t wait for the concluding book coming sometime this year. Highly recommended.

(this review originally appeared on fantasyliterature.com)

18 people found this helpful

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James L. Thane

We're All in Big Trouble Now!

Reviewed in the United States on December 16, 2013

Verified Purchase

This book has the most intriguing premise of any that I've read in a long while. Set in the not-too-far-distant future, it features Hank Palace as a fledgling detective in Concord, New Hampshire. One night, Hank is called to the scene of a suspicious death in the restroom of a McDonald's restaurant. An insurance man named Peter Zell is lying on the floor with an expensive leather belt wrapped around his neck. The other end of the belt is tied to the handicap grip bar next to the toilet, and the officer who discovered the body has called it in as a 10-54S, that is, a suicide by hanging.

Sad to say, there's a lot of that going around these days, ever since astronomers discovered that a giant asteroid, designated 2011GV, is swinging around the sun in preparation for slamming into the earth at about a billion miles an hour six months hence.

The damned thing just came out of nowhere, one of those giant rocks that occasionally passes "near" to Earth but not close enough to be a concern. When 2011GV first appeared in distant space, all the "experts" insisted that it too would pass by harmlessly and that there was no need for concern. Turns out there was, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. The friggin' planet is about to be destroyed.

As one might imagine, a lot of people are upset about this and some changes have occurred in the wake of the news. The world economy has collapsed; there's a lot of turmoil everywhere; governments have assumed emergency powers, and so forth.

Lots of people are killing themselves; a lot of others have quite their jobs and are devoting their last six months to fulfilling life-long dreams. Then there's Detective Hank Palace, who's doggedly determined to keep doing the job he always wanted for as long as he possibly can.

The truth is that, at this point in time, no one really gives a rip what happened to Peter Zell and how he wound up dead in the McDonald's restroom. But Hank does. The death looks suspicious to him and he is determined to investigate it as a murder until proven otherwise. the book details his investigation which is, as you might imagine, a little out of the norm for a police procedural, given the death sentence hanging over everyone on the planet.

It's interesting to watch Hank work, and one admires his determination. Either that, or you question his sanity. It's also intriguing to watch how the rest of Winters' cast reacts to the coming of the end of the world. Any fan of police procedurals and looming apocalyptic novels will probably enjoy this book.

[SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ FURTHER UNLESS YOU WANT TO KNOW HOW THE BOOK ENDS!]

I have one complaint about this book. I am compulsive about never reading a book's tease before beginning the book. I don't want to know anything about the plot until it unfolds in the course of the story. As I approached the end of the book, I was very anxious to see how the author would treat the final moments before the big collision between the asteroid and the Earth.

Except that he didn't. The book ends with several months still to go before the big event, and only then did I read the back cover and realize that this is only the first volume in a projected trilogy. I was hugely disappointed to learn that I would have to wait two more books before getting to the moment I was anticipating, and I'm not sure if I'm willing to do that, in large part because, although the premise is very intriguing, I'm not sure that it can be sustained over the course of three books rather than the one I was expecting. Also, I'm not sure I was enamored enough of Hank Palace to want to read two more books with him as the central character. This is a case where I'll probably wait to read reviews of the next two before deciding if I want to continue with the series.

8 people found this helpful

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Kate

Give yourself a treat - read this trilogy!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 25, 2014

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When asteroid 2011GV1 (Maia) first appeared in the sky, it sparked a worldwide enthusiasm in astronomy. It would be, astronomers predicted, a spectacular near miss. But, as the days passed and the calculations were repeated and repeated, the optimism vanished. This would not be a near miss - it would be a dead hit. In just six months. What is one to do? What would you do?

Hank Palace is a young detective, newly promoted, in Concord, New Hampshire. He is honest, immensely likeable and obsessive - he shelves misplaced books in libraries, he writes down every fact in one of his father's old notebooks, he will not led a lead drop, hanging on to it for all its worth and pursuing it to its end, no matter the cost. When the body of Peter Zell is found in the bathroom of a McDonalds, hanged, there is nothing to challenge the assumption that he is one of the many suicides you'd expect when an asteroid is about to hit. But Hank notices something odd about the body and, despite the good natured, even affectionate teasing of his colleagues, Hank will not let it go.

What follows is an intriguing and absorbing murder mystery, a whodunnit that twists and turns, pursued by the determined and earnest Hank Palace. But the mystery is just one half of The Last Policeman. There is a reason for the title. With the end of the world only six months away everyone has to ask him or herself what they want to do with their last weeks. Many cannot face it and kill themselves, some drink or drug themselves into a peaceful state of denial, some turn to spirituality or hedonism or violence, others set off in pursuit of their Bucket List, abandoning families and homes to chase after a last dream. A few can only do what they are meant to do. There is very little higher on Hank Palace's Bucket List than fulfilling his role of being the best detective he can be, of finding justice for Peter Zell and others like him. Almost inevitably, Hank draws people to him and almost despite themselves quite a few stop to help him.

The other half of the novel is the depiction of a society beginning to lose itself in the horror and fear of what is to come. With six months to go and with the dreadful news relatively recent the world, or at least this piece of it in New Hampshire, is just about hanging on to a degree of normalcy. Many people are still working, children are still at school, there is still water, electricity, money, phonelines and internet. But it is getting harder. Phones often don't work, fuel is about gone, business are closing, a restaurant meal costs thousands of dollars. For the moment there is still a police force but now it is regulated by a whole new set of laws. The smallest offence now will land the culprit (guilty or not) in a cell for the duration. That is a fierce deterrent - for the time being.

The Last Policeman is a terrific novel. It's short, punchy, exhilarating and utterly addictive. Written in the first person and present tense, we see it all through Hank Palace's eyes and experiences. I'm not a huge fan of first person present tense but if the style was made for any novel it's this one. Hank is a marvellous companion - he is compassionate, warm, self-deprecating, persistent and active. The world might be about to end but this is by no means a depressing story. Ben H. Winters fills the pages with the humanity, often humorous, of every day interactions between Hank and his colleagues, family and friends. Hank's batty younger sister Niko is flakey but also entertaining, introducing a touch of conspiracy theory. It's hard not to care about her, especially as Winters deftly builds into our understanding the back story that has helped define Hank and Nico's lives. There is a touch of tragedy throughout, not just because of the asteroid, but also because of the relationships and feelings that Hank must deal with. I was with him every step of the way.

The Last Policeman is the first in a trilogy - while one element is solved, the whodunnit, the other element, the asteroid impact, can only intensify as the days pass and I cannot wait to see how. There is so much going on, so many big themes and important questions, all feeling especially powerful because the whole scenario is dealt with so realistically. This is a very real dystopia, made even more so by the gradual pace at which it grips hold. I was captivated by the end of world scenario and enchanted by the character of Hank Palace. There was only one thing I could do after reading this and that was turn to book two, Countdown City, immediately. I then read the final book straightaway. Fabulous!

2 people found this helpful

James Tormey

A brilliant read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 13, 2020

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I have had The Last Policeman trilogy on my kindle for quite a while. I’m not sure why I didn’t dive into them straight away but it probably has something to do with the fact I have hundreds of unread books to read (and I had spread myself thin with promises of reviews….) anyway, I finally got round to them and boy am I glad I did.

The biggest compliment I can pay these books is that I read all three of them one after the other without reading so much as a cereal box in between. That is how invested in the plot I was, I just HAD to find out what was going to happen next. Graphic novels aside, this rarely happens for me, I sometimes can’t even read two books in the same GENRE one after another!

The trilogy focuses on Detective Hank Pace, and life in the last months on Earth as we know it. Scientists have spotted an asteroid that is 100% likely to hit Earth and nothing can be done about it. What would you do if you knew the world was ending? Continue to pay your mortgage or rent? Continue to work a job you hated? Or would you decide to go and do some the things you had always wanted. Life suddenly seems a lot shorter than it did before.

While almost everybody on Earth has abandoned their posts, Hank cannot. He wants to do the right thing and do his job. He’s a detective, and he has a hunch there is more to his case than there seems to be. This determination defines his character throughout the series. He needs to find the truth, it is all that is keeping him going.

The trilogy is a fantastic mix of a dystopian novel and a detective mystery. Our protagonist is one of the most intriguing characters I have read in recent times. The writing is top notch. The plot is at times absolutely devastating, and not just because the world is about to end. Hank is truly put through the wringer throughout. I really enjoyed this series, and it is one that I highly recommend you check out, no matter what genre you normally enjoy.

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Liz Barnsley

Apocalyptic Crime Mash Up - excellent!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 12, 2014

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**Actual rating 4.5 stars**

So anyway, its the end of the world. In just a few months a huge asteroid is due to decimate the planet – no Bruce Willis available to save us, the majority of people on earth are doomed. As we meet Hank Palace he is still diligently doing his job, whilst around him people are trying to get their bucket lists achieved in record time – that or simply giving up and killing themselves.

So when one more apparent suicide victim turns up in the local McDonalds the majority of Hank’s colleagues sniff and move on…Hank however has a bad feeling about this one and starts to investigate. At this point I am one happy reader – I love apocalyptic fiction and I love crime fiction – here is a wonderfully imaginative and clever mash up of the two which grabbed my attention immediately and only got better the further I got into it.

There are some interesting themes here – if you knew that not only you, but probably everyone you knew, was due to die in a fiery ball of flame on a set date in the future, what exactly would you bother with? Ben Winters explores this theme quite gently with various asides in the plot – some people for example spend all their time high on whatever drugs they can get their hands on, and all over the world different people take a different viewpoint. In the centre of this maelstrom sits our hero – if indeed you would call him that, some might say he’s slightly batty – I mean what does it REALLY matter if someone kills someone else when the end is nigh. And there is the central premise that runs throughout.

The story flowed along in a marvellous style, absolutely gripping, lots of twists and turns and Hank himself is a really well drawn character. There is an energy to the prose that keeps things moving along even in the quieter moments and the ending was excellent, setting us up nicely for whatever comes next. I’m really intrigued to read the rest and find out where the author is going with this – after all he has set his own limits on how far this can go. Possibly. Who knows?

Either way this was a tremendously fun read, definitely giving pause for thought about what is important in life, with some great characters, a gripping central mystery and comes highly recommended from me.

Happy Reading Folks!

Source: Purchased copy

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Alyssia Cooke

Different and interesting

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 5, 2019

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This is an interestingly different novel in that most apocalyptic novels are by their nature post apocalypse. The big bang has happened and what remains is a survival story of sorts. I don't think I've read a full pre apocalypse novel before, particularly not one that also doubles as a crime novel. I've never seen the two genres put together and I am pleasantly surprised that it works so well.

It completely re-arranges both genres as whilst crime novels tend to be full of a drive to find the perpetrator, here Hank Palace is the only one to even think there is a crime. He's certainly the only one interested in trying to track down the missing pieces of what has happened and make sense of this 'attempted murder'. As his boss put it, it's a suicide that he is trying to make look like a murder. From the apocalyptic sense though, this is a world in which the worst actually hasn't happened yet and yet it might as well have.

Winters writes well and the startling depictions humanities reaction to the end of the world are writ clear throughout. Hank Palace is one of the few people still interested in doing his job, although as a newly promoted Detective with little experience under his belt, he isn't always very good at it. You get the sense that he'd be a great detective in about five years time... but the world doesn't have that long. He's utterly straight laced, has the procedurals learned by heart and is distinctly socially inept. When half the population has disappeared on bucket list quests or topped themselves, he's a rare breed. He's not always that likable but you have to at least see a certain value in his continued drive.

I'll be interested to see where Winters goes next with this series. The novel has a full resolution, and the series has a pre-defined timeline; after all, they are all going to die.

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Rob Kitchin

enjoyable, well written police procedural with a nice contextual twist

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 24, 2012

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Hank Palace has achieved his life's ambition to become a police detective in the small town of Concord. Unfortunately his promotions coincides with news that Earth is going to be hit by 6.5 kilometre wide asteroid travelling at speed. In the months before the coming apocalypse the economy has unravelled, some people have found religion, others are making plans to try and survive, or have given up work and are living one long party. And some are not waiting to find out if humanity will survive and are taking their own lives. One such man, an insurance actuary, has seemingly hung himself in a McDonalds' toilet stall. But Palace is not convinced. The world might be about to end in six months time, but he's going to continue to his job regardless of the general apathy and lack of resources. And if foul play is involved, he's going to make sure the perpetrator witnesses the event from behind bars.

The tag-line for The Last Policeman is `what's the point of solving murders if we're all going to die soon, anyway?' It brings an interesting twist to the story, providing an unusual framing. Otherwise, this is a straight up-and-down police procedural where Palace uses his skills and wits to piece together and solve a mystery puzzle. The construction of the story is well done, with Palace being misdirected or led down dead-ends, slowly working out the reason for the death. The characterisation is a little thin especially beyond Palace, suffering I think from the first person narrative, but it's made up for in the plot and premise. There was also more scope to explore the nature of a pre-apocalyptic society and elaborate some philosophical musings on the meaning of life and the human condition. However, the premise is used much more as context, rather than as foil. That's fine, but I felt it was a missed opportunity. Overall, an enjoyable, well written police procedural with a nice contextual twist.

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