The Last Policeman: A Novel (Last Policeman Trilogy)

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In six months, the scientists announce, an asteroid is going to hit the earth and end life as we know it. That's the premise for this clever, enthralling novel.

Knowing that death will arrive in six months has lots of people simply walking off their jobs. Heading out to enjoy whatever hours remain or fulfill a Bucket List of places to see.

Not Palace, however, the main character, who has always wanted to be a police detective and now has his chance.

Concord, New Hampshire has become a 'hanger town". People who chose suicide rather than endure what may be a horrific death after the asteroid hits. One of these hangers is Peter Zell, who apparently commits suicide at McDonald's.

But Palace refuses to accept Zell's death as yet another suicide. Instead, he starts investigating. Zell, it turns out, seems to have been a rather likable fellow, a quiet nerd who worked for an insurance company, alphabetized his cereal and had few friends.

Everyone, including the medical examiner, agrees that Zell is a suicide. The fact is: no one else seems to care. About anything much, in fact, now that the end is so near.

What really draws you into the book is the way the author spins out the background of what happens when everyone knows death will come in six months. For example, the government has frozen the prices for restaurants. So why would anyone bother to show up and make the food and serve it? The $1,000 tips.

People respond to the looming catastrophe by "doing all sorts of things, for motives that can be difficult or impossible to divine clearly. In recent months the world has seen episodes of cannibalism, of ecstatic orgies; outpourings of charity and good works; attempted socialist revolutions and attempted religious revolutions; mass psychoses ...People are building rocket ships, people are building tree houses, people are taking multiple wives, people are shooting indiscriminately" (pp 114-5) in public places.

In a world that is soon to end, in a world in which there seems no real point to anything anymore, why should Palace take what time he has left to try and find out what happened Zell?

The facts lead Palace to the reason for Zell's death. Also there is a second mystery involving a relative of Palace's, one that might spin out through the next book in this series.

This is a clever mystery, with a satisfying conclusion. Best of all, it appears to be the first in a trilogy.