The Last Policeman Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B008J9ENTS | Format: EPUB
The Last Policeman Description
What's the point in solving murders if we're all going to die soon, anyway?
Detective Hank Palace has faced this question ever since asteroid 2011GV1 hovered into view. There's no chance left. No hope. Just six precious months until impact.
The Last Policeman presents a fascinating portrait of a pre-apocalyptic United States. The economy spirals downward while crops rot in the fields. Churches and synagogues are packed. People all over the world are walking off the job - but not Hank Palace. He's investigating a death by hanging in a city that sees a dozen suicides every week - except this one feels suspicious, and Palace is the only cop who cares. What's the point in solving murders if we're all going to die soon, anyway?
The first in a trilogy, The Last Policeman offers a mystery set on the brink of an apocalypse. As Palace's investigation plays out under the shadow of 2011GV1, we're confronted by hard questions way beyond "whodunit". What basis does civilization rest upon? What is life worth? What would any of us do, what would we really do, if our days were numbered?
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 8 hours and 20 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Brilliance Audio
- Audible.com Release Date: July 10, 2012
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B008J9ENTS
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.
"What would you do with just six months until the end of the world?" This, apparently, was the question that Ben H. Winters put to various pundits while preparing his book, THE LAST POLICEMAN. The question suggests science fiction, almost the classical "What if..." scenario. Yet, Winters's book is ultimately a fast-moving, psychological mystery that--while never engaging with them deeply--forces the reader to contemplate some of the oldest existential questions: Does death give life meaning, or is it that which negates it? How should I live my life? Can I be saved?
Albert Camus famously asserted that there was only one true philosophical question: Why not suicide? This is the burdensome question that all of Winters's characters must grapple with when the scientific community confirms that the planet will likely be destroyed by an imminent collision with an asteroid in six months' time. Camus's answer to the question was not for the weak-willed: the "absurdist" hero must reject suicide and embrace his existential situation, no matter how absurd it may be. For many of Winters's characters, the task proves too much, and so Hank Palace, the young detective who narrates the story, finds himself called to a series of suicides. Most of the investigations are perfunctory, bureaucratic affairs. But one of them just does not feel right: no suicide note, no cellphone, a brand new designer belt used to rig a noose....
As the investigation unfolds it is clear that Palace is not just looking for a killer; he is also looking for meaning, purpose. The victim, who Palace tells us he likes, is almost a mirror reflection of himself: ordinary, orderly--not quite OCD, but close. He even dresses the same as the victim (both men have several suits of a single color).
The Last Policeman Preview
Link
Please Wait...