Book Review: The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters

The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters

Paperback, 316 pages

Published July 2012 by Quirk Books

Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original (2013)

The lone cop who gives a shit about a murder, that no one else thinks is a murder to a trope way over used in mystery or cop dramas so you have to give credit to Winters her. It is hard to make a mystery original at this point, but every genre has been over done at some point. One of the most fundamental ways to breath life into genre writing is cross genre. Science fiction does this all the time. It is not a new thing, but I am not sure how much this tactic is used by traditional mystery writers.

Ben Winters is a writer who lived in my home state of Indiana and got on my Radar last year when he cracked my personal top ten with the intensely political alternative history book Underground airlines. While this book gets filed in Mystery it is certainly more science fiction to me.

Set in a world that is 77 days from the end, the earth of The Last Policeman is on a collusion course with asteroid big enough to end everything. Social-norms are out the window and things are bad in this small New Hampsire town That Hank Palace a 27 rookie detective is trusted to solve crimes. So when he finds a man hung in the bathroom his buddies just consider it "another hanger."

Suicide is all too common in this world so no one, not even the put upon medical examiner wants to consider this latest case a murder. Palace of course can shake the case. From here it is a trope-fest. I mean the corny cop dialogue, love interest involved in the case, deeper involvement in a larger case it is all there and perfect. I mean those perfect tropes set against a new apocalyptic setting is what makes this one special.

I think the familiar moments are what made me feel so comfortable reading this book. I enjoyed the dialogue. If there is one weakness is that the mystery ends up feeling pretty low stakes consider all that is happening in the world. That can work out if the themes grow in the next two books. Yeah this is a trilogy and I hope Winters treads a little new ground in the next two books.

Winters is a interesting writer I was impressed by this but even more so by his Underground Airlines. Sorry this review is a little short I neck deep in writing a novel at the moment. So my attention is a little scattered.