Review: The Last Policeman Series by Ben H. Winters

Titles: The Last Policeman, Countdown City, and World of Trouble
Publisher: Quirk Books
Overall rating: 4*

Henry Palace thought he had a future, a future to recover from his past.  Being a cop was his calling and he felt he could be good at it.  But now the world has just learned that an asteroid will hit Earth in just a few months and suddenly,  nothing is the same.  While many decide to quit their jobs to hit their bucket list or simply give up on life, Henry Palace finds himself a detective, and he is determined to do his job regardless of the circumstances.  When he is called to a suicide scene, some details seem to point to a more complicated solution.  Palace investigates against the advice of his colleagues and the world that is collapsing around him.

Some people, however, think that there is a way to save the world, a plan that the government is trying to hide.  Nico, Palace’s tortured sister is a member of a group trying to locate and free a scientist who pretends to know how to reroute the asteroid.

Even if the mystery part of the books is rather simple and more of a pretext, Winters succeed in telling a tale of the end of the world that is as sad as it is fascinating.  The books in the series are set at three different moments of the countdown to doomsday and give a realistic and complex view of how a civilisation collapses when day to day routines of life are replaced by hopelessness and chaos.

The Last Policeman is a series that will stay with me for a long time and has already provided many conversation topics with my family.

Bookstore Links: Amazon.com  |  Amazon.co.uk  |  B&N  |  Waterstones  |  WH Smith

Reviewed for MCT by Marie Claude.

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