The Last Policeman series

I'm not generally one for detective novels or police procedurals, unless what we're hunting down is some metaphysical truth or something half in and half out of this world, because (and this shouldn't come as a shock to you, oh regular reader) I don't have much time for the real world. It's dull and disappointing and not what I was promised, but that's a whole other post.

I was going to introduce The Last Policeman series as an exception, but on (brief) reflection, it fits the mold. At the beginning of the first book, an asteroid has just been discovered heading towards Earth (it was 'hiding' behind the Sun) and humanity has 150 days to get its affairs in order before an extinction level event. North America will be spared the brunt of the impact (of course), but not the fallout.

So, now, the question is: What do you do when you have 150 days to live? The books both ask and answer that question. Most people 'go Bucket List' -- they abandon their loved ones to do the things that up to now they've only ever dreamt of doing: dangerous sports, travelling the world, taking copious amounts of drugs, having sex in public and so on. Everyone else begins hoarding resources and, as time goes on, they strip everything they can find of even middling value.

One man, however, carries on carrying on. As law and order takes on a different shape, a police detective continues taking on cases, even though they seem impossible to solve -- you know, given that everyone has scattered to the four winds and the only certainty is the end of the world in a hundred days and counting.

I read the first book a couple of years ago and I enjoyed it enough to download the other two books in the series, although I only really remember the beginning of the book and a handful of other details. (PS: I wrote a post about it where I misspelt the author's name, which doesn't bode well.) I then started the second book but only got a third of the way in before abandoning it.

But then, at the beginning of 2025, I decided that I have to read all the books I own before buying any new ones. See, I recently moved house and found I had way more stuff than I'd anticipated (I had to hire a second truck), but two thirds of that 'stuff' is books and two thirds of those books are unread... And for anyone suggesting that I *whispering* sell any of my books, you're reading the wrong blog, heathen.

So I read Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro again (I never said I couldn't reread books) and then I read The City We Became by NK Jemisin and then I picked up Countdown City again. I started at the beginning ... and finished it in three days flat.

Unlike my post about the first book, the prose is clear and thin on metaphor, except when needed and even then it's bare bones. Like the main character and the genre itself, the author focuses on fact and function. When he compares one scent to another, for example, it's to tie two events together. 

The main character is more mature than in the first book (although in another sense, he's regressed to a lovestruck pre-teen). Hank Palace (yes, that is genuinely his name) is your classic detective, devoted to revealing the order inherent in the chaos, but he's no longer obsessed with the rule of law but with what is 'right' -- which at the end of days seems a bit of a moving target. For me, that made him easier to empathise with. I love nothing more than an unreliable narrator in an extreme situation whose actions you, the reader, are prepared to justify, no matter what.

And I have a feeling that statement is going to be tested in the third book.

As if the world ending is not enough, the tension really picks up in the second half of the book, although it's slightly undercut when you realise the main character survives at least long enough to feature in one more instalment. That is perhaps my favourite part of the book -- pages and pages of Hank surviving when survival seems pointless. And Houdini the dog, especially the scene where he stands in the doorway like a werewolf, framed by fire. 

In the end the mystery felt a bit constructed, but -- and this should be obvious -- I'm not here for the plot (a bit like in life).

Unfortunately, a rogue blogger already spoilt part of the plot of the third book for me, which I am peeved about, because this one's a doozy. But I'll keep it to myself, at least for now.

The Last Policeman

I was not drawn to the book by the title, clearly. The title puts me in mind of an I am Legend-Rick Grimes-Deadwood mash-up. The apocalyptic surviver/cowboy thing has been done - although not to death. Those who have watched the entire Space Odyssey and can still talk about it without PTS breakdowns call the detective story, cowboy epic and science-fiction culture siblings. It makes sense, really. Yes, really. Trap activated and now you shall listen to my theories even though I have only watched five minutes of Space Odyssey before genuinely wanting to inflict physical harm upon myself.

Five minutes of my life I lost: Space Odyssey

Then again, if I were an expert, I wouldn't be putting all this down on a blog for fickle readers. Yes, again. That's you.

The Last Policeman is a detective novel. The mystery is staid: a 'hanger' has been found dead in a McDonald's bathroom and our intrepid detective believes he was murdered. The evidence being a black belt. Oh you're waiting for more? There is none. Justifiably, his colleagues think he is young and overzealous and way too committed to the whole justice thing (they have a point).

Did you notice it? The tide of silver-grey herrings? A 'hanger' is a suicide by noose. Why would one have slang for types of suicide? (I have been drawing this one out.)

An asteroid is flaming through space aimed like a stone in a slingshot slung by Hercules for Earth. And everyone is offing themselves - hanging being a popular method. (Not smart, peeps. Like, at all. It is incredibly difficult to successfully hang yourself, for reasons I shall not explore.) When the novel begins, the asteroid (sentimentally named Maia) is seven months away and 103% on course to hit Earth.

Now, I am not against a natural disaster wiping out the destructive toddler that is the human race. In fact, if I were somehow given the choice, I would choose to resurrect the dinosaurs. Partly because I have always wanted to see a dinosaur, from a secure hiding place obviously. This reminds me of the meme that if human beings had to fight for survival against the dinosaurs, the egg-laying creatures would win.

I also never understand the reactions to the apocalypse. You know we aren't immortal, right? As someone once said, we are pretty much hamburger meat. We make it until we don't. And there are lots of places on Earth where the apocalypse is pretty much every day. "Kill the cockroaches", Russian gulags and Ebola being good examples.

But while we're - I'm - discussing this, our unconscious delusions of immortality counter our death drives, like the self-correcting nervous system and Gaia. Freud said that we have to believe we are immortal in order to face our mortality and lots of psychologists whose names I don't know agree that the popularity of horror movies and apocalyptic fiction is in seeing someone else die so we can feel relief at still being alive and reinforce the idea that we are immortal.

True as Bob.

Ok, so by the time Maia gets here, she won't have many people to irradiate, and if she doesn't, there won't be anyone to say 'I told you' to. But believe it or not, some really sadistic people are still doing their jobs, including this very naive detective (I actually think he has a mild form of autism or Asberger's). Well, not doing their jobs, which is why they don't believe - or care about - the murder. Perhaps this is how he deals with his imminent demise: by obsessing over someone else's death. Oh Freud, you could write a trilogy of books about this.

 As the narrator repeatedly reminds us, the fallible scientists slid down a slide of probability until they reached the mud of almost certainly (because never say never - or just anything unequivocal. Always leave room for retraction). Our socially stilted detective seems stuck on this, probably because he likes a long shot. Which is a criterion of a good but definitely not romantic hero. These heroes are perpetually - or almost perpetually - dissatisfied.

Think of the many John Wayne or Clint Eastward characters (let's be honest, they are all just one guy with different ponchos). To be a cowboy, the hero needs to be isolated from society, even ostracised, with some trauma in his past that he assumes some guilt for. He is self-reliant in his isolation and eternally awkward in society. He is cruel, but he shows that humanity is cruel. The cowboy always faces the march of civilisation and the extinction of his little corner of desert. He is the last outpost of the old ways, in which people have one-on-one relationships with the environment. Dang society. Where is that asteroid when you need it?

Sigourney Weaver kicking some gross alien ass

Now consider Sigourney Weaver's character in Alien 2. She travelled through time when she travelled through space in the wake of blowing up a really horrid, slimy flock of flies.  Her daughter may as well be dead because she is old and crabby. No one believes her about the flies so they think she is a murderer - an insane one. She is lost in this new world and stuck in the one before having to kill things. In the end, she displays some epic gunpower (she straps two guns together - why has no one ever thought of this?!) in an epic fight wearing a robot suit. Cowboy much?

Back to the apocalypse (to my mind, facing those fracking aliens would be far worse than an instantaneous death). In I am Legend (the book), Robert Neville is all of these things, except he really is utterly alone. You could argue the zombies are a metaphor for society, being a much better catalyst than sheep, but you could also argue that without a society as backdrop, he cannot be a hero. Neville is not your Will Smith martyr; he can only be selfish to survive.

Hank Palace is definitely isolated: he uses boxes as furniture, his sister is a drug addict, and his colleagues are waiting for the day the penny drops and he realises the world is already disaster. One trait I didn't mention: honour. These men all have a code of honour (which is not justice. And I am ok with that). In Detective Palace's case, his code is logic and rules and that takes the form of justice when we meet him. He reads every amendment to the laws (now coming in and heavy), views everyone as equals (except the criminals), and writes down every clue in a blue notebook so he can put them together.

He seems to be in some denial about Maia. I will leave you to figure that one out, because you need something to do other than read blogs.

The asteroid, like bad guys, aliens and zombies is a reminder and fear of society's fallibility. The inevitability of its destruction. And perhaps the isolation that comes of knowing this. Of being unable to stop knowing this. We are attracted to these stories to roll around in their foreignness and convince ourselves they cannot happen. Except I always wonder at this fear. My degree (let's milk it for the tiny ounce of value it has) taught me that 'civilisation' is a fantasy, as is any sort of social Darwinism (I am thinking of technological Darwinism here). Change is as constant as death.

I would prefer to be murdered by an asteroid though.

There's more! I have mislead you twice about this. The detective genre. Cowboy much? One or two people deep in a conspiracy theory who pursue the 'truth' even when faced with physical harm. Look, they yell, way to loudly in a dark warehouse while they are being hunted. Society is fraught with red herrings, but we have found the truth. The world has order, friends! Phew. Joke's on you, buddy, but let's take the win. In an impressive flip, in the end they are welcomed into society, having found a friend or the love of his life or just acceptance. 'Told ya so,' he thinks and sometimes actually yells.

Society is not unequivocally screwed. Not as long as this hero(ine) brings order to the world. Like the movie named whatchamacallit, you do something good for a person, who does good, who does good. But this isn't Carthage and so our land is not about to be sown with salt and we aren't about to be taken slave. Society just is because we are and we are mortal. Good breeds good, but trauma begets trauma.

I seem to be playing both sides of the fence here. But look! There is no fence. (An asteroid took it out after a dinosaur stomped on it.) These works of the imagination conjur up our worst fears, which are part of being human and therefore inevitable, and then sings us a lullaby about our own agency. We can save ourselves, they say. Even in the face of the apocalypse, we can still make meaning of a mystery. And therefore we are immortal. Or something. Maybe just immune to death for the immediate future.