"The Last Policeman," "Countdown City" and "World of Trouble" are the three titles in Ben H. Winters' trilogy about a lone policeman trying to retain his moral compass when the world is, seriously, about to end. The literary conceit is that an asteroid is flying towards the earth and without a doubt will hit and destroy life as earth knows it. In the first book, the asteroid is about 18 months out. Things are falling apart, people have taken off to fulfill life-long dreams, have left their jobs, their families. The foundations of civilization are crumbling faster than a stale shortbread cookie. Police departments, fire departments, hospitals, utilities are all failing. But in this slowly sinking boat is Henry ("Hank") Palace, a true detective and an honest one. He is randomly assigned a suspicious death, one that every other cop would write off as a suicide, especially since no one cares anymore about unimportant deaths. But Palace feels a duty to find out what happened to this person, and off he goes to investigate. Along the way he sees how the impending apocalypse is turning the world inside out.
The first of the three novels catches you. The second leads you on and the third is deathly dark, almost depressing in its portrayal of the depths to which humanity has sunk. By the start of the third novel "World of Trouble" the asteroid is one week away from slamming into the earth. There is no electricity, no communication system, no food and no water available except what people have hoarded. Money has no value. A jug of water is worth a life.
Hank Palace knows that everyone is a few days away from annihilation and he is just about ready to phone it in, to walk down a road and die on the plains but an old friend asks for his help in finding someone. And Hank realizes that he also needs to find his sister, a renegade wild child that he needs to see before the End of Days. So he sets off, with just a bike and a small dog, to track down two people before everything ends.
Hank reminded me of Will Kane, the marshal in the movie "High Noon" who faced his nemesis alone, without the support of his townies. Hank Palace knows it is all for nothing but his moral code will not let him dismiss someone's search for the truth. It isn't that Hank is a hero. He simply wants to know the answers to the questions. In his heart, he is a cop and he believes in right and wrong. As he faces the end of everything, he is not immune from taking the law into his own hands, and he knows he will have blood on his hands, but he also knows he has done the right thing for the people he cares about.
This is a really good series. The descriptions of the breakdown in the structure of the world, how people (fictional) deal with the end of their world, the chaos and deprivation that ensue, are brilliant. Hank is the most well-drawn character, but every character in the trilogy is very well done, very clear, very real. If you decide to read this, definitely start with the first book, "The Last Policeman" and if you are not ready to read book 2 and 3 right after that, I will be surprised. Yes, the asteroid could be construed as a gimmick, but it never seems that way. It seems feasible and honest. It isn't science fiction, it never gets into that territory. Hard to explain but very easy to like.
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