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The Last Policeman (2012)

As is the way of such things, I saw a review of this book almost 15 years ago and was intrigued by its premise and setting, but only found a cheap version recently, on Kindle. It is a police procedural with the uncommon locale of Concord, NH. Meanwhile, the mystery within is set against a background of an Earth where order is breaking down because an asteroid is headed our way with undetermined catastrophic consequences to follow. How’s that for a grabber (even if you aren’t a Granite Stater)?

Henry Palace is the eponymous policeman of the title. He is incredibly earnest and intent on pursuing police work to the very end. When he is called to a McDonald’s where a businessman has hung himself in the bathroom he can not help the feeling that the death is suspicious - even though such incidents are so common that the dead are simply referred to as Hangers.

Bucking the tide of ennui and desperation that afflicts his department and the society around him, Henry pursues his investigation nearly single-handedly. His sense that he has stumbled onto something bigger than a suicide is fed by the disappearance of his erratic sister’s partner, who he discovers is being held at a government facility.

We’ve become rather used to our detectives being tragically flawed heroes. Henry, on the other hand, is extremely decent and downright Puritanical. Some might find that off-putting. I quite enjoyed his determination to maintain moral and social standards even in the face of impending doom.

(Reviewed:04-Aug-26)

Grade: (A)

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Ben Winters Links:

    -WIKIPEDIA: Ben H. Winters
    -AUTHOR SITE: BenHWinters.com
    -FILOGRAPHY: Ben H. Winters (IMDB)
    -SUBSTACK: The H Stands for Substack
    -PUBLISHER PAGE: Ben H. Winters (Simon & Schuster)
    -INSTAGRAM: benhwintersauthor
    -ENTRY: Ben H. Winters (GoodReads)
    -WIKIPEDIA: The Last Policeman
    -ENTRY: The Last Policeman Series (GoodReads)
    -BOOK SITE: The Last Policeman (Quirk Books)
    -ENTRY: The Last Policeman (TV Tropes)
    -ENTRY: The Last Policeman< (BookBrowse)
    -ENTRY: Ben H. Winters (Bookreporter)
    -ENTRY: Ben H. Winters (Fantastic Fiction)
    -ENTRY: Ben H. Winters (Internet Speculative Fiction Database)
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    -INDEX: Ben H. Winters (Crime Reads)
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    -INDEX: Ben H Winters (ReacTor)
    -REVIEW INDEX: Ben H. Winters (Kirkus)
    -VIDEO MINDEX: “ben h. winters” (YouTube)
    -EXCERPT: Countdown City: The Last Policeman Book II (Ben H. Winters, Quirk Books)
    -EXCERPT: The Last Policeman (Ben H. Winters, Quirk Books)
    -ESSAY: This Scene Could Really Use a Man-Eating Jellyfish: How I wrote Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. (Ben H. Winters, Sept 15, 2009, Slate)
    -ESSAY: The Coronavirus Is Upending the Plot of My Novel: It’s set in 2020. My characters now do ridiculous things, like hang out with each other. (Ben H. Winters, April 08, 2020, Slate)
    -STORY: “Fifth Avenue”: Trump keeps his campaign promises. (Ben H. Winters, Jan 31, 2017, Slate)
    -INTERVIEW: The Smartest Guy in the Room: Ben H. Winters interviews Joe Ide about his debut novel “IQ.” (Ben H. Winters, November 7, 2016, LARB)
    -ESSAY: In Praise of Reading Le Carré's Entire Oeuvre In Order: Ben Winters on finishing a project he never wanted to end (Ben H. Winters, 3/08/24, Crime Reads)
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    -INTERVIEW: Interview (& Giveaway): Ben H. Winters, author of The Last Policeman ( Kristin, July 13, 2012, My Bookish Ways)
    -INTERVIEW: Solving Murders at the End of the World: An Interview with Ben H. Winters (Ethan Gilsdorf, July 12, 2012, Wired)

That detective angle is definitely part of it; my goal is that The Last Policeman is successful as a mystery qua mystery, even if you take the whole asteroid-coming business out of it. But hopefully what makes it fresh, even more so, is the level of detail, realistic detail, about what things would really be like, or might conceivably be like, in these terrible final months. I put in a lot of hours on the phone talking to economists, to scientists, to technologists, to create my model of a world on the brink. Just for starters, you’re talking about a worldwide financial panic; you’re talking about a crisis of law and order; you’re talking about a lot of wildness and brutality, but also a lot of good Samaritanship.

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The Last Policeman (2012)

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