Hank Palace may not actually be the last policeman, but there aren't too many left. In Ben H. Winters's The Last Policeman, the world is about to end. A meteor is on a collision course with earth, and people are counting down the days until impact. Palace gets a quick promotion to detective and becomes a dogged investigator.
During this time of impending doom, suicides have become commonplace. But when he's called to the scene of an apparent suicide in the bathroom of a fast food restaurant, he gets the sense that it's not a suicide. As he digs into it, he uncovers a sordid, end-of-days way of life that desperate, hopeless people resort to.
The Last Policeman is sort of interesting, as Winters writes against this background of a society that is losing any hope of surviving more than a few months. What is left of organized institutions is crumbling, so it's remarkable that Palace tries to maintain a sense of normalcy and justice. This is not a bad book, but I didn't find myself caring much about the characters or the story. I may check out books 2 and 3 of the trilogy, just out of curiosity.
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