This is the second part of the Last Policeman series, and we pick-up a few months after where we left off in book 1. Hank Palace is no longer officially a policeman, as the force continues to downsize the superfluous elements like investigation and missing persons and beef-up the more hardcore elements of riot squads and crowd control. Hank can’t shut off his policeman’s brain, and so finds himself investigating whatever comes his way.SPOILER ALERT: Along comes Martha, whose husband Brett has gone AWOL, and she asks Hank to find him. With less than 3 months left till the end of the world (asteroid impact expected in early October), Hank knows there’s not much hope for finding Brett. He likely left on his own last hurrah adventure, met another woman, or was killed in the increasingly frequent and random violence of the urban areas. But, he promises to try. His efforts take him to a commune society at the university campus (all the food, drugs, sex, and guns anyone could want for the last days) to eventually track Brett down on the shores of Maine, where he’s trying to be a hero.
Since the US is on the “safe” side of the globe from the projected asteroid impact, millions of “countdown immigrants” have been making their way to the US by the container-ship-load. Officially, these CIs are intercepted and moved to holding camps. In reality, they are being halted at the shore and killed – shot, drowned, blown-up by government forces, in the name of preserving what resources and order remain in the US. Brett is trying to stop this. In the end, both Brett and Hank fail in their missions. As the urban services crumble further and the unrest overwhelms authorities and order, Hank is rescued by another police office, and they escape to a safe house in the woods to await the end. SPOILERS END.
While fairly light in the literature field, these books are interesting to read as the situations feel quite possible. As modern urban infrastructure is on the edge of decrepitude, it wouldn’t take much civil unrest and a sharp adjustment in priorities for the breakdowns to happen fast. Combine that with desperate global migrations, ridiculous wars, and creeping totalitarianism, and these novels feel remarkably prescient. They also lead to much what-if rumination – what would I do in such a world, especially where the end is truly nigh, so there is no “after” to plan for.
I do recommend this series as a surprising and thought provoking set of reads. I’ll be trying to get through Book 3* this year, but given the few categories that this fits in, I’ll likely not count the next one.
Fate: the set of three will go to someone else once I’m finished.
1 – book with a murder
13 – set somewhere I’ve never been
36 – part of a series
*I did, and it was also very good.
rclr 